


Flight

by LegendsoftheTARDIS



Category: Bird Box (2018), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Doctor Who
Genre: We use the f-word in here, if you like happy endings here's one, sappy warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 04:44:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 23,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19192069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LegendsoftheTARDIS/pseuds/LegendsoftheTARDIS
Summary: Hi and welcome to this hella long multi-fandom fanfic! It was born because I wanted to know how Bird Box (the movie) ended. Like *ended* ended, how they fix it, because I’m tired of stories without happy endings. So apparently the Thirteenth Doctor and co., and the Legends of Tomorrow help save this world. What a plot twist.This is such a specific fic. There’s probably like 3 people who’ve watched all those things (me and my sister are 2 of those). So for that one other person, I hope you enjoy. I spent almost 6 months on this because you know when you have an idea and you just have to write it? And you can see it all in your head, almost like it writes itself? Yeah. Like that.I’m pretty happy with it and that’s the first and foremost most important part of creating any art—is that it makes you happy. I just wanted to post it on here because I’m kind of proud of this ridiculously long thing (double the length of my senior thesis! Priorities!). If you were wondering what songs I was thinking of while writing, they were "Something New" by The Score and "I Feel Good About This" by The Mowgli's. In case you wanted to know.





	1. An Adventure...

Everyone assumed the earth would go silent. No one thought the earth would go blind.

It had been six years, approaching seven. Nearly seven years of hiding. Nearly seven years of fear. When the wind blew, it meant danger. When you heard a strange noise, it meant hide. Until one day when the wind picked up, there was a strange noise, and this one was different. It was a wheezing, scraping noise, like an old engine. And this time, it wasn’t invisible. This time, when the breeze died down, in its place was an old blue telephone box.

* * *

“Sara?” Ava’s face appears on the holo-screen. Sara is sprawled in a corner of the Waverider, holding the portable holo in one hand.

Sara’s face breaks into the dumb smile (well, she thinks it’s dumb; Ava thinks it’s cute) she always wears when she hears her girlfriend’s voice, but then she sees the worried lines between her eyes. “Ava? What is it?”

“Something new. I need you to check it out.” Sara can feel the urgency in Ava’s voice. She can’t see Ava’s hands but she knows they are white-knuckled, clasped together as if to keep something together.

“Yeah of course. What is it? Is it…uh…”

“No, _this_ one isn’t actually the Legends’ fault.” A smile briefly appears on Ava’s face. “It’s not actually even in our universe. But our friends have been keeping an eye on the other earths, and there’s something very wrong on one of them.”

“Define wrong.” Sara says wryly.

“There’s these… psychological ripples. So strong they’re affecting the universe around it, and its reaching ours too. It’s more than a time problem. It’s an existence problem.”

Sara can tell she’s diverting. “Ava… how bad is this?”

Ava takes a deep breath and says in answer, “We’re letting Nora out to help you.”

“Wh-what?!” Sara leans forward. “Are you—can you even do that?”

“Weeeell, no one’s really here to tell us not to…” Ava manages a small smile.

Sara sits back and thinks. What’s bad enough that Ava would break the rules and let Nora out to help them? Not that she doesn’t want to believe in Nora, she does, it’s just… And Ava is looking at her, with something akin to desperation in her eyes, so she shakes away any misgivings and says, “So… time to try out that new travel tech Barry and co. have been working on?”

“Absolutely. But Sara—” Ava looks worried, which is odd, because everyone knows Sara Lance can handle herself. “Be careful.”

“Always.” Ava manages a smile at that and Sara glances upwards, even though Gideon is technically all around the ship. “Gideon? How do you feel about interdimensional travel?”

“I thought you’d never ask, Captain.”


	2. ...Or Two

“Where are we this time?” Yaz leans forward across the TARDIS console, bracing herself as the TARDIS grinds to a halt.

“2025. And I don’t know yet,” the Doctor replies. She strides over to the door, flings it open, pokes her head outside, calmly but firmly says “Nope!”, and steps back inside, shutting the door tightly.

“What is it?” Ryan asks warily. “Did we end up in a heap of dinosaur dung again?”

“That was one time!” the Doctor protests. “And no, this is…” she pauses. “Different. Something is very wrong here. Anyway…” A faint line of concern appears between her brows. “sometimes we don’t take the TARDIS places. She takes us.”

“But where _are_ we?” Yaz asks again.

“Earth II,” the Doctor announces. “Like your earth, but in a different galaxy with a different history. I don’t normally take my human friends here because you get confused about which planet you’re from.”

“So what happened here?” Graham asks. “Looked perfectly normal to me.”

“Ah, that’s the thing.” The Doctor spins to face her friends, coattails flying behind her like a cape. “It _looks_ normal. But do you feel that?”

The three humans exchange blank glances and shake their heads.

“Right,” the Doctor says, bobbing her head. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget how human minds work. Something is missing here. _But_ there’s a weird hum, like there’s also something _else_ here.” She taps the side of her head. “I don’t know what it is yet. Could be fine. Probably dangerous. So just in case—” She rummages in a compartment for a moment and tosses objects at the three. “Neuroblockers! Ready to go find out--” She bounces up and down and pauses. “…Fam?”

“No,” Ryan says emphatically, shaking his head. “Still no.”

The Doctor sighs dramatically. “Fine. But we do need a team name.”

“No, we don’t!” Ryan insists, while Yaz laughs and Graham chuckles at their common argument.

“Yes, we do!”

“No, we don’t…” Ryan throws his hands in the air and the usual debate follows them out of the TARDIS and into the woods. The Doctor pauses for a moment and whispers something to the TARDIS, then follows her companions into the dappled forest.


	3. Snazzy Send-Off

“Okay, gang!” Sara claps her hands together as the Legends gather around the main console. “Who’s ready to do something incredibly stupid?”

“Is this any different than our normal missions?” Ray raises an eyebrow. Next to him, Nora looks concerned. She keeps looking around like she expects the Time Bureau agents to appear.

“… fair point. But yes. Today we are testing out Barry and Cisco’s new technology while visiting a planet in another universe in some sort of a crisis. Zari--” Sara glances over her shoulder at the subject of her sentence who saunters into the room with a thumbs up. “just finished updating the Waverider’s systems.”

“We’re going to be the guinea pigs?” Mick looks displeased at this, but he looks displeased at almost everything except beer.

“I’ve literally been a guinea pig before, and let me tell you, it was not fun.” Charlie adds.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Sara interrupts before the conversation can devolve further. “Gideon, would you please show them what Ava sent?”

“This is Earth II.” A globe glows to life in front of them, spinning on its axis. “Its history is similar to our earth, barring the events of about seven years ago,” --the image changes to newspaper headlines, film footage, and photographs scrolling past in a seemingly endless line of horrific scenes--“when an unidentified, invisible species appeared and caused what essentially became the end of the world.” The groups’ faces change from shock to horror and back again.

“What… what is that?” Zari asks hoarsely, clearing her throat.

“Subject unknown.” Gideon’s voice (as always) is level. “It appears to cause hallucinations as well as psychosis, eventually leading the victim to suicide or murder. It targets victims through the visual cortex, meaning if you look at it--”

“You’re screwed.” Charlie finishes. Her hands grip the side of the console tight enough to turn her knuckles white.  
“Precisely.” The humans could just be projecting, but Gideon sounds almost unnerved.

The Legends are, for once, silent, weighing the gravity of this situation. This is… different than anything they’ve faced before. But Sara can feel them shifting, readying for battle with whatever this is. No matter how terrifying, how unimaginably nightmarish. She bares her teeth in a smile that is more growl than grin. _That_ is why she loves her Legends. No matter the challenge or the danger or the fear, they never back down. Slowly, they look up to meet each other’s eyes and see their own determination reflected back at them. Saving the world is kind of like an addiction. Once you start, you can’t stop. Helping people becomes what you _need_ to do. And Sara knows, that given the choice, they would rather take the pain of seeing this disaster, of knowing, if it means they can save someone.

“Alright, Captain,” Ray breaks the silence first. “Take us away.”

“Okay gang!” Sara spins around, heading for her chair. “Who’s ready to go save another earth?”


	4. An Introduction...

They troop through the woods, the Doctor leading the way. She spins and walks backwards for a history lesson, somehow not tripping over anything. “This planet is basically the same as yours. Sometimes that happens—parallel planets, we call them. Same atmosphere, species, biology, history, different people, but something happened to this one. Do you hear that?” she stops.

The humans pause and listen. The air smells like melting snow and damp earth. The sun filters weakly through the trees. But… “I don’t hear anything…?” Ryan says, half-statement-half-question.

“Exactly!” She points at him. “No hum! Where’s the animals? The people? The electricity? The _life_?”

“It feels… dead.” Yaz agrees, and shivers. The world is grayer here somehow. Like the colors themselves are muted.

“Or like everything’s in hiding.” The Doctor has that look on her face, where she is putting together the puzzle they’ve stumbled upon but they haven’t found all the pieces yet.

“Well, we are in the middle of the woods…” Ryan mutters, kicking a leaf. It doesn’t do much.

“What’s that?” Graham asks up ahead, squinting through the trees at an indistinct shape.

The Doctor bounds up next to him. “Great eyes, Graham! C’mon gang! Let’s see if anyone’s home!”

* * * *

The building Graham had seen is a sprawling brick structure, weather-worn but sturdy. Vines and creeping ivy cling to it, covering half the roof. There are no signs of people. They approach cautiously anyway, splitting up to check all sides of the building.

The Doctor sonics the area and examines the readings. “This can’t be right…” she mutters to herself. “These levels… the source…?” she squints up at the sky and through the trees and all around them.

“Hey Doc!” Graham calls. “We found a door!”

Ryan is standing on the stoop, hand raised to knock. “D’you think there’s even anyone here? D’you think they’re friendly?”

“Well, if you would knock, then we could find out,” Yaz replies. “I don’t feel right bein’ out in the open.” Ryan shrugs, finding this a good enough answer, and the Doctor nods distractedly. There is someone watching, but she doesn’t know yet if they are good or bad or neither. All she knows is those readings are—

Ryan bangs on the door again. “Hey! Anyone home?” His friends crowd around him, listening for any sound of movement. Turning to the Doctor, Ryan says “Are you _sure_ anyone’s--” Suddenly and without warning, the door opens with a screeching noise of rusted metal, and the Doctor and her companions are yanked through the doorway.

It would have been dim inside but for the flashlight shining directly into their faces. “Hey!” Ryan protests, while Yaz yelps and Graham shouts, all four piled on top of each other.

“Check their eyes!” someone yells. Yaz can’t see but she feels the presence of bodies around her, panicked people with an invisible barrier of fear between them and her.

“They’re clear!” another, closer voice shouts. The flashlight lowers and the four blink spots out of their eyes.

“Oh great.” Ryan grumbles. Instead of a flashlight pointing directly at them, they are now staring down the barrel of a shotgun.

“I don’t like guns.” the Doctor announces assertively, back to the door.

“Well, we don’t like dying. So the gun stays until we know who you are.” the woman holding the rifle shoots back.

Yaz looks around at the semi-circle of people surrounding them. They look desperate. And scared.

“I’m the Doctor,” the Doctor says, holding up her hands. “These are my best friends, Graham, Ryan, and Yaz.” She can feel their heartbeats at ten times the normal speed. But steady. And if she could turn around and look at them, she knows she would see boundless trust in their eyes. “We’re here to help.”

“Who are you? Where did you come from? And _how_ were you outside?” A person to their right probes.

The Doctor frowns. “What’s outside?” Ryan attempts to glance behind them without moving. He doesn’t remember seeing anything dangerous.

There are scoffs and raised eyebrows around the circle. “Are you kidding me?” A lumberjack-looking man steps forward. “Who are you people, really?”

“I told you, I’m the Doctor and these are my friends.” The Doctor’s voice grows a bit more steely. She doesn’t like being disbelieved, and she doesn’t like people who don’t listen. “We are here to help. There are some _serious_ psychic projections around here so if you could _let us go_ then maybe we can figure out what’s going on.”

The faces around them appeared bewildered. Some mistrustful, some just plain confused.

“Do you think they’re with them?” someone asks in a hushed whisper.

A head shake from a man to their left and center, whom the others appear to be looking to as a leader. “Their eyes are clear. And they don’t speak like them.”

“Where did you come from?” the woman with the rifle questions. Her voice is sharper than the knife the person next to her holds.

“From another planet. We came here in my TARDIS.”

The woman looks taken aback for a moment, then nods sarcastically. “Okay. That makes sense. You still don’t think they’re with the crazies?”

“Wait--psychic projections?” someone whispers. There are mutters and flutterings, thoughts passed around the circle. Graham notices how they work as a team, or maybe even a pack. Survival. Holding hands tightly so as to not lose anyone.

“ _Yes_!” The Doctor emphasizes, clearly wanting to gesture emphatically but not wanting to get shot. “There is something very wrong with your planet! I did just a _quick_ scan and there is something overpowering absolutely everything else! Your thoughts! Every creature in the woods! Electricity! Even the growth of the trees!”

“What about you?” someone with a shock of red hair points. “Why aren’t you… overpowered?”  
The Doctor’s eyes light up in clarity. “Neurodampeners!” She goes to move but remembers the gun. “May I?”

“You can’t possibly think they’re telling the truth!” someone out of view shouts.

“If it was true, would that really be any crazier than what already happened?” the woman yells back, and looks slightly surprised at her own words. There is a pause, a holding of breath. The woman takes a deep breath, looks at the Doctor and nods once, sharply. But she holds the trigger just the same.

“See?” The Doctor removes the small silver circle from behind her ear. “They basically protect your mind from any psychic attack.” She receives a few understanding nods and some puzzled looks. “Ah… think of it like a pair of sunglasses! I used to have a really great pair once. Wonder where they went?... Anyway, they shield your mind from outside rays, like glasses do from the sun, in this case it would be ‘waves’ of another mind trying to influence your own.”

The woman has gone stock-still, as has everyone else. They are waiting, holding their breath. Something is coming together. Someone, finally, has answers.

“You mean… you know what these things are? And you have something to stop them?”

“Eh…not entirely. Not yet, anyway. I was hoping you could fill me in? And I have a few more neurodampeners back in my TARDIS but not enough for all of you. But I think something has gone terribly wrong. Something that these”— she indicates the devices— “won’t fix. But if you let us help, we can fix this.”

“We’re pretty much experts at that,” Ryan adds, and the Doctor grins.

“I can tell you’ve all had a rough go of it. I can tell you’re scared. But I’m asking you to trust me. Trust”—she glances at her companions— “us. Let us help you bring the life back, so you don’t have to hide anymore.” She stops and looks imploringly around the room, full of people who are full of fear and life still.

They don’t know where these strange people came from. They haven’t been able to trust anyone, not even themselves, not even their thoughts, not even their eyes, for so long. But something about these four, this woman with a ridiculous coat and wonderfully colorful clothes and bright eyes gesturing wildly makes them trust her.

* * * *

They are led on a tour around the compound, complete with a kitchen, bedrooms upstairs, an indoor garden, an armory, a medical room and perhaps most surprisingly, an art room.

“We need ways to express ourselves,” Rick, the elected leader of the compound, explains. He knows this place by heart, walking confidently without any aid even though the hallways are narrow and dim. “This place used to be a school for the blind, so we’re probably better set up as far as shelter and privacy than most. But if we just hid, we’d go crazy. So we try and keep art alive.” The Doctor nods at this, pleased. “It may look small on the outside, but there’s a lot more inside than meets the eye.”

The four guests gasp in understanding. “It’s bigger on the inside!” they all chorus, wearing the same matching grins, much to their guides’ confusion.

Farther away, someone whistles loudly. Someone else echoes it back. “What’s that?” Yaz asks, head tilted to one side.

“That’s the all-clear sign,” Malorie (the woman who knows how to shoot) explains. “It means ‘no danger.’”

“Sounds like birds,” Ryan observes.

Aly (the redhead) winks. “That’s the point.” They push open a door to a rectangular room, windows blocked like the rest of them. In the center is a table, and the walls are lined with bookshelves and cabinets. “Here’s our meeting room. This is also where we keep anything from before. Newspapers, CDs, old technology, books, random shit like tax forms and holiday decorations that we have nowhere else to put because we are desperate.” They grin cheerfully in true nihilistic fashion.

Yaz wanders around the room, peering at the collection of things on shelves. The Doctor turns to her new friends (even if they don’t know it yet). “Why are you like this?” she asks, meaning their situation as well as their fear. Gently though, because there is something shattered in their eyes. “What _happened_ here?”

Rick sighs heavily and takes a seat at the table, pulling out a folder stuffed with newspaper clippings and other papers. “Seven years ago, something came.” He passes around the newspapers. “At first, we thought it was a virus. Or a bioweapon.” The headlines read: ‘Mysterious illness strikes the Western Hemisphere!’, ‘Mass suicides around the world cause panic, collapse’, ‘Is Russia behind this attack?’, and finally, a desperate question: ‘Is this an invasion?’ The Doctor’s frown deepens as she reads.

“People went crazy,” Rick continued. “They would be fine one minute, and the next…”

“They would kill themselves.” Malorie says flatly. “It didn’t matter who. It had no rhyme or reason. Hit some people faster than others. We don’t know where it came from or how it started or how it spread.”

“We figured out it only happens if you look at them.” Aly says quietly. “So we hid inside.” The three have the look in their eyes when you’re trying your hardest to not remember something. “They cut most of the power too,” they add. “Backup generators and stuff that wasn’t connected to a grid ran for a little, but that was ages ago.”

They all sit in silence as the Doctor and her companions try and process what they are hearing. The photos in the fading newspapers speak for themselves. Some things are too horrific to say out loud.

“But we made this a safe house,” Rick breaks the silence. “We send out a message on the radios every so often to see if there’s anyone else out there. We survive. We don’t go out alone. Thankfully, north California doesn’t get too cold in the winter. It’s not perfect, but we have a community.”

“That’s why we saved the best for last.” Aly manages a small smile. Rick, Malorie, and Aly rise and lead the four to the door in the very back of the compound. “Here’s our pride and joy,” Aly smiles wide. “Ta da!” They swing open the doors and the four travelers blink in the sudden green light. It is a garden, growing among the gray stone and shadows. There are people of all ages, and children, who had been playing, pause to stare at the newcomers and then resume their games. Bird dart in and out of the green canopy above, which lets in the light without seeing the sky.

Graham laughs, surprised, delighted. Yaz’s beaming smile appears on her face and Ryan looks about in wonder. Two kids run up to Malorie and throw themselves at her. Her face is softer now, and she looks up at the four. “This is Tom and Olympia. They’re mine.”

The Doctor smiles at the obvious love in Malorie’s voice. She stoops down to the kids’ level without making them feel condescended. “Hi Tom, hello Olympia! I’m The Doctor, and these are my best friends, Yaz, Ryan, and Graham.”

Tom asks, “Are you from England?”

“Clever boy! I am… kind of.” The Doctor turns her head to look at Malorie in question of _how does he knows what England is?_

Malorie shrugs. “We may be living in the apocalypse, but I’ll be damned if my kids don’t go to school.” Her mouth quirks up in a half smile.

“We have school every other morning,” Aly adds. “We basically all teach each other anything we can remember.”

“Why ‘kind of’?” Olympia refers to The Doctor’s earlier answer. The girl tilts her head and the Doctor turns back to her, bouncing a little on her heels.

“Well, you see, I’m actually a time-and-space-travelling alien. But usually I pretend I’m from England or thereabouts.”  
At the mention of the word “alien”, the children look solemn. “Do you know the bad thing?” Olympia whispers.

The Doctor shakes her head. “No. But my friends and I are here to fix it.” She straightens and gazes out at the garden. “How many?”

“Seventy-two.” Rick answers. “Mostly older kids to middle aged adults. We survive on what we grow, which is a lot, we had nonperishables stored up from before, we cook with what we have, and we send out hunting parties, but only if we’re really desperate. Water we get from the river, by way of a pipeline set up from before.”

“Why all the birds?” Ryan points upwards. There are tens, possibly a hundred, fluttering and nesting and swooping from the canopy above.

“They tell when the creatures are here,” Aly explains. “They completely panic and that’s how we know it’s time to panic.” Malorie elbows them and they barely flinch, apparently used to this response.

“And you never go outside?” Yaz asks.

Rick shakes his head. “Not unless we have to.”

“So you’re telling me these kids have never been outside? Never gotten to even see outside? Never ridden a bike or played football?” Ryan’s helpless anger is clear.

“It’s too dangerous,” Malorie says. “We survive.” she repeats, her simple statement conveying just how much she would like for her children to be able to run in an open space.

The lumberjack looking man, whose name is ironically Jack, runs up to Rick. “Dean and Henri are almost back. We heard them whistle.”

Rick nods. “Follow me.” They go swiftly to the front of the house, near the main door. There, Malorie takes up position with her shotgun, Jack, a woman named Violet, and a man named Harry stand ready with flashlights.

“What’s happening?” Graham whispers.

“Two hunters are coming back,” Rick says without looking towards him. “We make sure it’s really them.”

There is a knock in rhythm on the door, and everyone jumps. Seven years, and they are still terrified. _What does that do to a person?_ Yaz wonders.

“Ready?” Jack’s hand is poised over the door handle. With nods from the group, he opens it. Two people spill inside, breathing heavily and carrying several dead rabbits.

“Flashlights! Now!” Jack barks. Harry rips off their blindfolds while Violet checks their eyes.

“They’re clear!” she announces, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

The Doctor is standing still, but the emotion in her eyes in anything but. “Doctor?” Yaz whispers, touching her shoulder. Suddenly the Doctor darts past the hunters and cracks the door open and closes it swiftly behind her. No one stops her, because they are unprepared for someone _wanting_ to go outside.

“Doctor!” Yaz yells, and Ryan and Graham shout after her. They run to the window, pulling the curtains stapled to the wall aside the tiniest bit.

“What the fuck is she doing?” Malorie cries, covering her eyes. The rest look horrified and Aly quickly explains to Henri and Dean, darting into the cover of the side room.

Outside, The Doctor spreads her arms wide, coat billowing in the sudden gusts of wind that don’t reach the treetops. “Hey! I know you can hear me!” The not-wind creeps closer, jumping from bush to shrub to a scattering of leaves on the ground. “These people are under my protection! And believe me, you _really_ don’t want to mess with me.” This is the anger she will not let her friends see, because it is dangerous. This is the side of her that can and will cause pain, because even the best doctors sometimes cannot heal themselves.

Inside the house, Yaz, Ryan, and Graham are holding their breaths without realizing it. “What is she doing?” Malorie whispers mostly to herself, still covering her eyes.

Outside, the presence grows in the clearing, but the Doctor does not back down. She stands as sure as a hundreds-year-old tree. “Oh, you think you’re so powerful, terrorizing these people for seven years,” she leans forward. “But guess what? They _survived_. They’re _living_. And they’re not gonna let you win. I’m not gonna let you win either.” It comes as close as her nose, and The Doctor winces from the sudden mental pressure, but she bares her teeth in a smile that has known war. “Not gonna work, mate. I have this.” She reaches for the neuroblocker. “But guess what?” She takes it off and tosses it up and down in one hand. “I don’t need it. I’m a Time Lord. And trust me, my mind is far stronger than yours.” The thing surges, rising around her, and she raises her arms to meet it. “Won’t work. You know why?” Her voice is dangerous, thousands of years of anger and love and loss low in the air. The wind is howling, but her next words are as clear as stones in a still lake. “I am my own worst nightmare.”

The thing cannot make noise, but the mental screech is so loud that even those in the house flinch. The hurricane outside rises to a peak, and then vanishes without a trace.

The Doctor lets out a deep breath and lowers her head. She pops back up to wave to her friends in the house to let them know she is okay. The world is quieter again. The birds resume their normal panicked chatter.

And then there is a new sound.

Some big whoosh, like a deep breath. The air shudders, and so does the ground, as a rather large silver ship skids into existence, plowing up dirt and small trees and sliding to a stop a meter away from the Doctor.


	5. ...Or Two

“Welcome to Earth II!” Sara sits back from the controls as the Waverider skids to a halt. “How we feeling, Gideon?”

“Just fine, Captain. The upgrades seem to be working wonderfully.”

“Just what I like to hear.” Sara maneuvers the seat lock and jumps up from her chair.

“Are you doubting my skills, Captain?” Zari stands and stretches.

“Never.”

“Good.”

Sara leads her team towards the doors. They are suited up, ready for combat. “Remember, we’re going into unknown territory. The Bureau knows nothing about this universe except for this planet is giving off some really whacky readings. And, you know, the apocalypse. So be on your guard, watch each other’s backs, you know the drill.”

She smacks the panel on the wall and the doors slide open. Sara starts down the ramp and then stops short. “Oops.”

“What is it?” Ray asks.

“Did we finally run someone over?” Charlie stands on tip toes to peer over Mick’s shoulder. Nope. Standing below them is a woman.

She grins exuberantly at them. “Brilliant!” she exclaims. “The Legends of Tomorrow! I’ve always wanted to meet you guys.”

“Who the hell-” Sara begins, but is interrupted by Ray’s gasp. He looks like he’s going to cry or pass out. Or possibly both at the same time.

“Doctor?” He looks like a child on Christmas, times one million.

“That’s me!” she waves and grins.

“But I— I can’t— I thought— and you— and— here— and” Ray pushes past Sara as if in a dream while everyone else looks on in extreme confusion.

“Who’s that?” Nora whispers tentatively to no one in particular. (She’s still not sure why they kept her around. Sure she saved Constantine, but it’s clear they still don’t trust her, and she is glad for that. Wanting them to trust her would mean she actually cares what they think. Ugh. Anyway. Who is that?)

“The Doctor?” Sara cocks her head, remembering some long ago conversation she had with Ray— aka he rambled on about a lot of things and the rest of them just nodded along. “Like— the time and space traveling alien?”

“Hey that’s you!” Mick elbows Charlie.

“Not an alien,” she mutters.

He shrugs. “Close enough.”

“Okay,” Sara says, taking a hesitant but assertive step forward. “I’m all for a good nerd-fest, but we’re here to help.”

“So am I,” The Doctor says, looking around at the surrounding trees. She turns on one heel and beckons them to follow. “But we better get inside. I’ll explain there.” They follow quickly, looking like a bunch of very weird ducklings. “Also— warning: there will be flashlights in your eyes. Just a precaution.” She knocks in a particular rhythm on the door, which swings open just long enough for them all to be quickly yanked inside.

“Ow—there’s the flashlight,” Sara grumbles, trying to cover her eyes. Her team yells out various cries of distress and pain and a few expletives (okay, that was just Mick and Charlie). When she can see again after blinking the spots out of her eyes, she counts: Eight terrified looking people, their clothes faded and dirty, with dark circles and shadows in their eyes; three more relieved people, much cleaner than the others; and one alien, looking even more cheerful than Ray usually does, which Sara didn’t think was possible. “Okay. Everybody calm down,” she speaks quietly but firmly to her team. “They’re just checking. For…something.”

“Well!” The Doctor steps forward. “New friends, meet my old friends! And my… old-old friends!” She glances at the three humans nearest to her. “Wow, I’ve made a lot of friends today.”

“Why do we keep letting strangers in?” a big dude bellows. Charlie growls at him and Nora elbows her, keeping an eye on a woman with a rather large rifle.

Another man beckons for the large yelling man to calm down. “They’re safe, Jack. They’re not with them. And so far? She seems to be helping.” He nods at the Doctor, who gives him a smile. He is not looking at anyone in particular, and Zari realizes that he is blind.

Sara eases her shoulders, trying to figure out when, where, and what they are. She can feel the tension in the room, not just from them. The whole world here is holding its breath. Tight muscles, rapid heartbeats. Fear. It is everywhere. Why?

“See? That wasn’t so bad.” The Doctor spreads her arms to encompass them all. “Thank you.” She looks at the group of locals, who are clustered together. “For trusting us. I know this doesn’t make any sense, but we’re from a different planet, they’re from a different _universe_ ”— she explains quickly, turning to the Legends with an enormous quirky smile on her face— “and we deal with this kind of thing pretty much all the time. I know that blind faith hasn’t been the best survival strategy, but I promise that we are all gonna make it out of here alive.”

Sara cautiously raises her hand, because it seems like she won’t be shot anytime soon. “Hi. I’m Sara. This is Zari, Mick, Charlie, Ray, and Nora. We’re, uh…”

“Kinda like superheroes,” Ray offers.

The woman scoffs, clearly judging their outfits. “Yeah. I can see that.”

Ray looks confused for a moment, then looks down at his suit, which gleams out of place among the dinginess and grayness. “Ha. Oh yeah.”

“Did you… is that real?” someone with red hair steps forward tentatively. “Like is that a real supersuit?” They receive a few eye rolls. “What?” they exclaim defensively. “I haven’t had _anything_ to nerd out about in seven-freaking- years!”

“Yeah!” Ray looks ecstatic at the possibility of talking about quantum technology. “I can show you how it works! I made it myself.”

Their mouth drops open. “No. Way.”

“Hey!” Sara waves her hand at Ray. “Save first, geek later?”

They all follow Rick, Malorie, Aly, Violet, and Henri through the winding halls of the old school to the nicknamed “War Room”, introducing and explaining on the way.

“Wait,” Zari frowns confusedly, looking at the Doctor. “Aren’t you… supposed to be a dude?”

“You’re only on season nine,” Ray explains, as if that explains anything at all.

The Doctor turns and looks them both directly in the eyes and winks. “Spoilers.” Zari and Ray squeak ecstatically at this, and the Doctor just grins.

“Soooo,” Sara says, bringing the conversation back on track. “How come you were outside?” She indicates the Doctor. “And you—” a nod at Graham, Yaz, and Ryan. “were looking out the window?”

“Neuroblockers!” they chorus simultaneously while the Doctor looks on proudly.

“They stop the things from gettin’ inside your head,” Ryan explains. “But we don’t have many.”

“And there’s no other way to stop them?” Sara asks, leaning on a chair and flipping a knife, brow furrowed. She does it without even realizing, the hilt skimming her fingertips.

Rick shakes his head. “We haven’t found one if there is.”

“And who’s ‘them’?” Charlie puts the word in air quotes. “Whoever you were afraid we were?”

“Honestly, we don’t really know,” Aly grimaces. “Some crazy people. No specified demograpic. We call them puppets. They want to see it—the thing—and they want to make you see it to. And it doesn’t kill them. We dunno how. Or why. Maybe cause they’re helping it.”

“But that’s not even the first question,” The Doctor says, pacing around the room. “What are they? _Why_ are they here? Why are they doing this? What’s the point of destroying you this way? Why are they only outside? Why not inside too? Why weren’t the Legends affected right away? Why doesn’t it seem to affect the animals?” She glances at the covered windows, books that haven’t seen light in years, and they can practically see her mind working faster than the speed of light. “How did they cut the power? And they don’t have physical form, did you notice that? Just in your mind. And they move the trees a little. But,” she glances up at her audience. “I don’t think they can’t touch you. So, what _are_ they, and what are they doing here?”

The humans are clearly struggling to keep up with her deluge of questions.

“And,” The Doctor takes a deep breath. “how do we get rid of them?”

If there had been any crickets around, they would have chirped.


	6. Nora Gets Things Done

Yaz watches the children in the garden, hands shoved in her jacket pockets. The Legends (minus Ray and Mick, who went back to the TARDIS with The Doctor and Ryan) are breathless with wonder. How, in a place where even the colors are hiding, does this much green exist? They saw the photographs, they read the articles. So this—this seems like a miracle.

“So you think they’re alien?” Sara is questioning Rick.

“It’s certainly not a virus, we figured that out pretty quick. Doesn’t spread like any pathogen. They have a _presence_ to them—not just in your mind.”

She frowns. “We coulda used John right about now.”

“Who?”

“Our warlock. He’s taking a week off to try and find any leads about his boyfriend.”

“He got dragged to hell,” Charlie supplies helpfully. “But he was pretty good at this stuff. Don’t tell him I said that.” Zari snorts and now it is Charlie’s turn to elbow her.

“Uh huh…” Malorie pretends to look like she understands any of that, which is what she’s been doing since any of these weirdos showed up. She runs her hands through her children’s hair, who stand contentedly, taking in these _new_ strangers. “So you guys deal with this kind of thing often too?” She indicates Yaz, and Graham, who has gone off to talk to some of the people.

Right now, he is kneeling by a little girl. “What’s your name?”

“Grace,” she answers, partially suspicious but mostly curious about this stranger.

A soft smile and a strange emotion cross his face, sadness but also hope. “That was my wife’s name. And she was one of the bravest, strongest, best people I knew.”

The girl grins and her mother looks grateful. Graham squeezes her hand and then rejoins the others.

“Yeah,” Zari answers Malorie’s question. “Lately we’ve been dealing with some demons and some, uh, other assorted magical creatures that mess up the timelines and generally wreak havoc. That’s why we’re here.”

Violet grimaces. “Some folks thought it was demons. I told them no, because demons are something you can see.” She touches a small silver cross around her neck. “They’re evil made visible. What’s inside or hidden is revealed. But these are the opposite. They make evil where there was none. So we can’t fight them with anything we know.”

“Still feels pretty creepy,” Aly mutters, kicking a rock. “Like we’re opposite-possessed. Instead of something being inside you, it’s all around you instead.” At the word “possessed”, Nora has gone still.

“They control your actions ether way,” Henri says softly. “what we can and can’t do. These kids never got to know what it was like to live without that. I don’t know what’s worse—to know what you have and then lose it, or to never have it in the first place.”

Nora is frozen. Her gaze darts from person to person, the children running in joy spite of the things that make them run in fear, shouting in glee despite the silence of the world outside.

“Nora?” Sara questions. She is still unsure about their former enemy-turned-temporary-ally-turned-fugitive-turned-captive-turned-reformed-ally? But she recognizes the haunted look in the other woman’s eyes. Some things you can’t run from.

Nora’s eyes are wide and she is barely breathing. Her hands are twitching at her sides and something that feels like lightning but without the snap of an electrical current begins to grow. She turns and bursts though the backdoor, heading towards…

“Nora!” Sara shouts, not an exclamation but an order. There is another, distant slam.

“Why the fuck does everyone want to go outside!” Malorie cries in desperation, pushing her kids in the arms of another woman before following. Sara looks back at the kids as she follows Malorie, but they seem to not have noticed her curse, or they’re heard worse things.

“She’s had some… unfortunate experiences with demons,” Zari explains to Rick. “She’s kind of sensitive about it!” Charlie drags her away as she’s speaking, the others in tow.

Yaz and Graham take up their previous posts at the window, the tiniest sliver of light coming through the blackout shades.

“What’s she doing?” Sara calls. She is pacing, hating her helplessness right now.

“Not sure,” Yaz replies, straining to see anything. “There’s… some weird blue fog?”

“Ah, bollocks,” Charlie whispers.

“What?” Aly looks terrified.

“She’s using her powers.” Zari isn’t sure why she’s whispering, but it seems like the right thing to do. Magic is serious stuff.

“Her _what_?” Aly’s face is not sure whether to look amused, bewildered, or awestruck. It settles on all three.

“Magic,” Charlie sighs exasperatedly, the “you dolt” implied. “She’s kind of a witch.”

Aly processes this information with little effort but clearly experiences some intense internal struggle before saying “… like Malorie?”

“NO!” Malorie, crouched down beside Aly, just hits them as they break into hysterical giggles. Charlie smirks and Sara tries not to laugh. She’s the captain; she’s gotta be professional.

By the window, Graham just shakes his head. Thank god for the youth. They laugh at the most impossible situations, just like Grace. He doesn’t know what the woman outside is doing, but he is certain he does _not_ want to get in the way.

Outside, Nora takes a deep breath and screams at the sky. The cloud—like a translucent shied now—around her grows, encompassing the house and everyone inside it. The birds do not shriek or shrill. Those in the garden cannot see anything, but they are well-tuned enough to danger by now to fall silent. Nora’s eyes are like lightning—energy flickers across them, like she is the conduit for an electrical strike.

The thing comes, called by something else’s power for the second time today. It is not used to resistance.

Nora’s eyes are filled with something broken, but she has taken up these shattered pieces of her childhood and parts of her and turned them into a weapon, to protect others the way she couldn’t herself. Her blood runs through her veins, freezing fire and burning ice. “You will not have them,” she hisses, spitting the words like daggers. She clenches her fists and the power grows.

“What is she doing?” Sara is nearly desperate enough to look out the window, but Yaz holds her back with a hand. (Although they all know if Sara thought she wouldn’t be a danger to everyone in the room, she could very easily push past the shorter girl).

“I think… she’s pushing them back,” Yaz says wonderingly. There is a halo around Nora, and it pulses in time with a heartbeat.

Malorie’s eyes are closed tightly, and she looks pained. Zari knows that look, but never this fierce. It is the look of someone who doesn’t dare to hope, but the hope grows anyway.

Outside. The malevolence pushes. Nora shoves back. She raises her hands straight up over her head like she is trying to pull down the sky. “No!” she screams. “You can’t have them!” The ground shakes, and small threads of power flicker like tongues of lightning. They trickle down her legs, wrap around her ankles, and sink into the dull earth. She does not realize that tears fall down her cheeks. There is no sound, but the _feeling_ of sound is overwhelming, simultaneously crushing them to the ground and shaking their bones free.

Nora howls the cries that were trapped in her chest for much of her life, back when this light emanating from her hands was red. Her blue-ness is a new sky, and she yells wordlessly, louder than a person should be able to do. There is a noise like thunder, that booms out from her epicenter and rolls out like a wave.

And then there is quiet. The ground beneath them feels like water, small waves rippling across the surface of the earth.

The humans inside are motionless, not sure how to move and barely remembering how to breathe. Charlie notices Zari’s hair floating like she’s shocked herself and tries to touch it but can’t remember how to move her hands.

Nora is breathing hard but standing. She stares at nothing for a moment, and then jumps to attention as a crashing noise sounds from the brush. It is the Doctor and Ray and Mick and Ryan, all looking windblown with leaves in their hair. Mick has kept hold of his gun still, though. A blue box stands behind them, perfectly in place despite the wind.

“ _Brilliant_ , Nora!” exclaims the Doctor, who has somehow learned everyone’s names already. She comes crashing down the incline and grabs Nora’s arms to spin her in a jubilant circle. “Absolutely incredible!”

“How—how did you do that,” Ray pants, too out of breath to form a question.

“Inside. Explain there.” The Doctor pushes all four of her charges towards the door, where Graham and Yaz are waiting to pull them all inside. Graham notices that the air is clearer, like after a thunderstorm. The heaviness has vanished, and you can breathe again. He glances at Yaz, who’s noticed it too.

Once inside, shouting immediately ensues.

“What the fuck?!?” (Malorie)

“Nora, _what_ the _hell_ \--” (Sara)

“I don’t know what you did, but it was bloody amazing!” (Charlie, an enormous grin on her face).

Zari just opens her arms in a questioning gesture, and Henri looks appropriately awed and afraid.

The Doctor somehow bustles all ten shouting people out to the garden. There, the rest of the survivor group stands wonderingly, staring, in various positions ranging from defense to relief to fear. They, in contrast to the Legends, are silent. But they _felt_ that, even though they couldn’t see it, seem to know who it was that did _whatever it was_ , although this might be because of the residual energy streaming from Nora.

Nora, coming down from the magic high, has absolutely no idea what she’s just done or how to react to all these people staring at her.

Then a child screams. Not in fear, or pain, or sorrow, but a pure, unadulterated shriek of joy and hope and strength, of determination and heart and belief in a fighting chance. The rest of the kids join in, whooping and hollering and dancing with each other, spinning in circles and leaping around the adults. They have just felt a miracle. It is their own fairy tale, where magic and science push away the darkness. A man laughs in shock, and a woman joins in the cheering. And suddenly nearly a hundred people are all yelling, every loud noise of expression they’ve been hiding for seven years.

Nora looks slightly frightened and absolutely confused. Ray laughs in sheer delight and puts both hands on her shoulders, not sure if he will shock himself but absolutely willing to risk it. “You did it,” he says with an unreasonable amount of pride and awe (Nora thinks it is unreasonable anyway, for she has no idea what she’s done, only the feeling of breathing air after being long underwater).

The Doctor clasps her hands together and laughs, while her three humans hug each other. The rest of the Legends gather around Nora, shouting and generally making a commotion, because this is what they do: celebrate each other. Nora grins shyly and ducks her head, never having experienced this before—not the joy or the noise or the love. This is a protective circle—a caim made of living beings, inside which nothing can touch.

“And _that_ gives me an idea!” The Doctor shouts over the commotion, nodding in Nora's direction.


	7. Harry Potter: Relevant in Every Universe

There are about twenty-five of them crammed into the war room, circled around the table. The Doctor stands over the maps and charts and whatever other informative papers they could recover, all scattered like leaves.

“So, we know these things operate mainly inside your mind, make you really sad or really afraid,” the Doctor says, putting the story together for the benefit of helping the humans follow her logic.

“Like dementors from Harry Potter.” Ryan supplies a helpful analogy.

“Or the boggarts!” Yaz realizes. There are some nods and sounds of agreement from around the circle.

“They’re definitely alien,” The Doctor continues. “And they seem to mainly affect humans. I think they _literally_ _change_ the structure of your brain. Animals can sense them, but they don’t go as crazy. Some people are quicker affected than others, and some react completely differently and start ‘working for them’. Probably something to do with your unique brain structures. And they don’t like houses. They can only exist outside. Possibly because these are your ‘shelters,’ so conceptually, you _instinctively_ believe you’re safer in there. They don’t have much physical form, and if they do, we can’t see it. So we really have no idea what they are!”

“Is this supposed to be helpful?” Malorie tone is sarcastic.

“Yes,” the Doctor spins and points at Malorie. “Because we don’t _need_ to know what they are.” She switches her gaze to Nora. “Nora had it right. Did you see how they reacted to her? They couldn’t get past her energy shield. Amazing, by the way. And then I realized—that’s why they cut the electricity. It was too much of a risk.” A few faces show dawning recognition. “What is the brain? Neurons firing, hundreds of miles an hour, talking to each other, communicating, generating electricity!” The Doctor is gesturing animatedly, and those closest lean out of the way (Yaz, Ryan, and Graham, however, are used to such actions). “They cut the power because it was a _threat_! They're scared of it. They need to be the biggest electrical conduit so they can influence you.” She points at the maps. “All these power sources, down. All that’s left is you. The human mind. So, they generate waves powerful enough to affect you individually, so they can take you out. Only works if you see them, though, because they go through your optical pathways. But what Nora did—” Nora makes a face, embarrassed at all the attention, while Ray just smiles happily. “—proves that they can be pushed back! We just need enough electricity. Enough _intention_.” She is somehow moving, pacing in this tiny room. “They’re only powerful because they’re big and they’ve got you scared and divided. If we can get the power back on, hit them with something _big_ , then we can—”

“Get rid of them?” Violet’s words waver between statement and question, wavering like she is on unsteady ground.

The Doctor nods. “We can hit them hard. Push them back. Maybe even dismantle them for good.”

“But where did they come from?” Malorie blurts out, desperate for a reason because a why at least make it easier to accept that something is happening. “Why are they doing this?”

The Doctor shakes her head. “I truly don’t know. I’m sorry. My best guess is that they’re some sort of dark consciousness, probably drawn by the _incredible_ brainwaves from earth.”

“You sure?” a young woman named Eliza mutters. “Last time I checked, most humans weren’t that incredible.”

The Doctor makes a face in acquiescence. “Okay. Fine. _Powerful_. Point is, there’s _so much here_ —darkness, light, love, hate, curiosity, all just beaming out from billions of people—they were drawn to it, smart enough to figure out what to do with it. But they didn’t count on you being able to fight back.”

“That’s because we can’t.” Aly points out.

“Not before, you couldn’t. But that’s because you didn’t know. Never underestimate the power of just _knowing_. Just believing something is possible is sometimes enough to make it happen.”

“Okay.” Sara slams her hands down on the maps in enthusiasm. “So what do we do?”

The Doctor grins. “I was hoping you’d ask that. New question!” she spins on one heel and resumes pacing. “What’s the most powerful, potent emotional thing humans ever created? Spans centuries and all of your senses?”

“I dunno, tell us, Doc.” Graham deadpans.

“Music!” she points at him. “It can make you cry, make you smile, make you jump up and down—all within a matter of seconds. If we can broadcast that to—oh, I dunno—the entire planet, then we can _wake up_ your brains. You just need the space to do it. If we can give you the _feeling_ , then you’ll have the mental capacity to fight them off. Combine that with an energy blast and—”

“Kaboom!” Ryan raises both fists in the air.

“Kaboom,” the Doctor nods self-satisfactorily.

“Okay…” Sara sits back, thinking. “So how do we do that?”

The Doctor’s smile is even bigger. “I was hoping you’d ask that next.”

There is an old electrical plant and a radio station a few miles from here—one of the big ones that reached places all over the world. It will take a little while to plan— engineer the technology from the TARDIS and the Waverider; divide into parties; teach them how to use the neurotransmitters and walk again with open eyes—but for once, the first time in seven years, the house is alive. There is hope, fragile and delicate as a frozen spiderweb, but it is there. The children feel it. This is the only change some of them have experienced in their entire lives, the only new thing in between years in the house, survival every day.

“Have… any of these kids ever celebrated a birthday?” Sara is not sure what possessed her to ask the question. Maybe she is thinking of Ava, how she too had her childhood stolen.

Petra, the woman who’d taken Malorie’s kids earlier, shook her head. “No. Never.” She used to be a maternity doctor. She offers a sad but grateful smile as she turns to talk to Malorie.

Sara nods, already planning and slipping away without anyone noticing. Their birds may be loud, but The White Canary is pretty damn sneaky. Nope. That was awful. She’s gonna have to work on her puns.


	8. Like Handprints in the Dust

Yaz is striding purposefully back from the war room when she spies Malorie. “Hey.” she peeks into the darkened closet.

Malorie looks up and nods in greeting, unstartled, because not much gets past her these days. She is looking at something, holding it as if it were a baby.

Yaz looks questioningly on, waiting for an invitation. She knows better than to approach without permission. There is an odd dance they do here— between community and individuality. To survive, they have to be a part of one living organism, breathe, sleep, walk together. But apart, they are so guarded, so reserved, protecting whatever they have left from their pasts.

The corner of Malorie’s mouth turns up in an invitation and shifts over so Yaz can see. They are photographs. Polaroids. “My kids,” Malorie explains, pointing at the first. “We found an old camera a few years ago.” Their smiles are hesitant but beaming, faces shoved up close to the camera lens because they’d never seen one before. There is one of her and a man with kind eyes. And the last picture features all four, pressed close together to fit the frame. 

“Is that…?” Yaz knows, without saying, so she will not ask _where_ he is.

“My…” Malorie’s face scrunches up. “I don’t really know,” she exhales in a rush. “Partner? We never…” she looks away, and Yaz gives her time. “We never said ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ or any of that. It didn’t feel right. Those were for a time when labels and society existed.” She touches the photos gently, like they are glass. “He was just…” The two stand there for a moment, bathed in memory.  

Yaz doesn’t know how they’ve done it. There is _so much_ in this house... Emotions are tangible things, and the grief of not only seventy-two people who have all lost someone, but the sorrow of an entire civilization presses down with a gravity all its own.

Malorie gives herself a shake and carefully slides the photos back into a plastic sleeve, which goes into a locked box, which is placed inside a bigger plastic bag. “These are the only photos I have,” she explains, reaching up to slide the box onto the top shelf. “I need to find Rick and Vi.” And just like that, the soldier is back. Yaz follows her out of the room, pausing to leave her handprint in the dust on the shelves. It just feels right, to leave a mark, because most of these scars are invisible.


	9. An Unexpected Party

“Wow!” The Doctor spins around, taking in the interior of the Waverider. “This is incredible!”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Gideon speaks over the system. “May I just say, your TARDIS is very impressive as well?”

“You can.” The Doctor beams. “I bet you’ll get along wonderfully.” Ray, who has insisted on following the Doctor everywhere, looks elated at this prospect.

“So… what exactly is the plan?” Zari looks skeptical. “We’re gonna half-assedly engineer some sort of device that’ll turn the power back on and create a wave strong enough to push back the things?"

“That is, if Captain Lance doesn’t drain all of my power first,” Gideon sounds amused.

They find Sara in the fabrication room, surrounded by… birthday supplies? There are balloons floating towards the ceiling, streamers draped over the tables, and approximately seventeen different cakes.

“Hey!” Sara calls out, half-hidden between boxes of decorations, a smudge of frosting on her face. “How’s the plan coming?”

“What… are you doing?” Ray bats away a balloon that’s come too close to his face. Mick takes aim at one before Zari pushes the gun down.

“Not. On. my. Ship.” she hisses, and Mick just shrugs.

“I don’t like balloons. Little bastards." 

“These kids have never had a birthday party,” Sara’s face is set in that determined line that the Legends know not to mess with. “We’re gonna give them one.” 

Zari gives the biggest, most drawn-out sigh in the entire world. “Okay. You know what? Let’s do it. Nothing here makes sense anyway. Let’s just throw a frickin’ birthday party surrounded by death monsters.” There is a grin creeping across her face.

The Doctor shrugs. “I think it’s a fantastic idea!”

“Okay cool,” Sara stands up, balancing eight cakes only by virtue of her training. “But someone’s gonna need to get the door.”

 

* * *

Nora is practicing her impression of wallpaper. They are waiting for the group from the Waverider to come back so they can start formulating the technology they will need to build. She’d helped as much as she could, but not knowing much about aliens or technology or topography, she found herself outside again. It was like a dream here. It certainly felt like one. Did she really do that? What did she even _do_?

Charlie saunters up beside her and leans against the wall. “Hey. Pretty wild, ey? Betya didn’t think you’d be here.”

Nora looks at her strangely, that small, vicious voice in her head that she is working on silencing asking why any of them are voluntarily talking to her. “No?...”

Charlie offers a grin. “I know what it’s like to feel like an outcast. To be treated like a monster.” Her gaze focuses on something far away. “They didn’t trust me at first either. But the Legends aren’t total rubbish. They learned. And they made me better too. They gave me a family. Didn’t matter what I’d done or had to do before. Just…” she pauses. “What we do now.”

Nora scoffs. “You think I want to join the Legends?”

Charlie shrugs, a lazy movement of her shoulders. “I think you want to fix what you did.” Nora looks down. “I think,” Charlie’s face transforms into a wicked smile. “you like Ray.” 

Nora chokes. “What? No. I mean, as much as I like anybody, which isn’t that much because honestly, you guys are annoying. Yeah, he’s nice and he helped me escape and believed in me first but—no—I--” Thankfully she is saved from further explanation by Sara making an entrance.

“Hello, people, aliens, species of all kinds!” Sara calls, kicking open the door. The Doctor, Zari, Ray, and Mick follow, along with a trail of florescent streamers and balloons. Aly and Henri follow, wearing party hats and smiling the biggest Nora had ever seen anyone smile.

“So!” Sara drops her various celebratory items onto a little wooden table. “We heard you all had never had a birthday party. And I think we deserve a little celebration, you know, some pre-mission good vibes.” She blows a noisemaker, and the tiny _toot_ sound makes the little kids laugh. “It’s a new day, kids. We’re gonna remake the world today.” (She addresses all seventy-two people, not just the actual children, and Ryan chuckles to himself). “So _technically_ , it’s everybody’s birthday. What do you say?”

The kids start shrieking and spinning in circles, running around with the streamers. The older ones kick the balloons back and forth in the age-old-game of “don’t-touch-the-ground”. 

“And,” Sara says in a dramatic whisper to Malorie, who has come up behind her, shaking her head in bewilderment. “I have a little something for the adults too.” She winks and presents a bottle of champagne.

Violet gasps and snatches the bottle out of her hand. “Girl, you gonna make me cry!”

Sara beams, and Aly throws opens one of the boxes. “Let us eat cake!” they cheer.

“I’ll light the candles!” Mick lifts his flamethrower. The Legends all scream and throw themselves in front of him. “I’m kidding.” he says, smirking. Zari hits him.

 “I love birthdays,” The Doctor whispers. She covertly points her sonic at the balloons, lift into the air and float around in circles.

“Okay, Gandalf,” Ryan mutters to her as the kids squeal and point in excitement. She just winks. 

“Look!” Ray holds a handful of seeds, dried fruit, and other assorted bird treats because birds can’t eat cake. He whistles at them and then yelps in surprise as a dozen alight from the rafters and land on his arms and shoulders, one on the top of his head. “They like it,” he says without moving a muscle. “I uh… didn’t think this through. Help?” Nora half-collapses in mirth against a wall, trying to stifle her laughter. Zari stops to take a picture with her phone and then gently removes a few birds.

“Here, Mick.” She hands the intimidating-looking man one, and he looks suspicious. She places a few seeds in his hand, and the parakeet hops forward a few steps to nibble.

Mick relaxes a little. “He kind of reminds me of Axel! Hey little guy,” he says, speaking to the bird. “You haven’t had any of this in a while.” He takes an entire handful of treats and nearly buries the small bird. “Here, all for you.”

The breeze picks up, swirling streamers into the air, and Sara looks back to see Nora blowing gently, creating a tiny windstorm. She raises an eyebrow at the other woman, who just shrugs and lifts her chin, daring Sara to say anything. Sara just shakes her head, feeling the old conflict rise within her (Daughter of the man who killed her sister? The Legends’ enemy? Survivor of Mallus? Ally? Fellow outcast? Another stray looking for a home? _Ugh_.) She takes a deep breath in, and lets it go. Confetti falls on them like rain, birds swooping between the bright petals.


	10. Composing a Love Song

“Okay, here’s the plan,” The Doctor leans in close, intensity burning from the bottoms of her feet to the top of her head. They are gathered in the room before the door room (the last line of defense before the outside). “Nora,” she points. “you’re going to make another shield. We have neuroblockers, but that shield kept them _away_ , not just out of our heads. Can you do that?” 

Nora nods resolutely, a determined look in her eyes. Ray leans over and whispers “Can you?” She gives him a _how-the-hell-should-I-know?_ look. 

“We—” The Doctor indicates herself, Ray, Zari, Elizabeth, Peggy, and Carlos” (she names three other people who used to be an engineer, a NASA physicist, and a musician, respectively) “will build the… thing using power and parts from the Waverider and the TARDIS.” She waves their rolled up blueprints around for emphasis. “What it _should_ do is combine psychic energy with physical soundwaves. We’ll put in a song, and the machine will jump _through_ spacetime to reach all the other broadcast stations in the world, which will be powered up by its energy as well. It’ll also send a sort of signal to your brains, wake you up, let you fight back. It’s like… a psychic global speaker. We just need to break their physic control even for a few second, destabilize it.” The Doctor looks at the hastily drawn up plans for the contraption that she holds in her fist, a combination of impossible feats of engineering and jerryrigging, time-and-space technology, imagination, and a hell of a lot of hope. “Sara, Mick, Malorie, and Jack have agreed to stand guard. Once that’s done, we’re gonna take it to the power plant and—”

“Blow stuff up!” Ryan cheers. Aly high-fives him.

“Close enough!” the Doctor throws up her hands. “Alright, gang, who’s ready to invent some previously unheard-of technology using only theoretical bases that’ll either work really great or make some _really_ incredible fireworks?”

Everyone raises their hands.

 

* * * * 

Nora takes a shaky breath. The ten volunteers stand ready, neuroblockers on. The others stand in the next room, away from the exit. The Doctor looks calm, and Carlos clenches and unclenches his fists. Malorie has a death grip on her gun. She told the kids the plan, and they just looked at her with trust uncompromising.

“You’re gonna come back to them,” Yaz says to her, knowing what she’s thinking. “I promise.”

Ray comes up behind Nora and clearly wants to touch her arm but hesitates. “Ready?”

Nora shakes her head once. “Nope. Let’s do it.” She catches a brief glance of Sara’s grin before throwing open the door and leading the charge.

“I’m gonna die I’mgonnadieI’m gonna die,” Malorie mutters to herself, eyes still tightly closed. Somehow, the small metal circle behind her ear hasn’t entirely convinced her. But she doesn’t falter down the stairs.

 Nora stops and throws her arms wide, ignoring the smell of fear, ignoring the responsibility now heavy on her shoulders, ignoring their stares (especially Ray). She _twists_ the world the way she used to, but it is gentler this time, because she isn’t fighting anything. This time, it is as easy as waving her hands. The energy in herself and in the atmosphere responds, and a glowing blue dome crackles to life.

“Yeah!” The Doctor cheers. “That’s what I’m talking about.” She reaches out with her mind (Nora can tell) and hits the psychic wall. The two women nod at each other. “Let’s get to work, crew! Get it?” she nudges Ryan. “We’re a crew now ‘coz we’re building stuff.”

“I get it.” Ryan’s tone is pure exasperation.

Malorie’s breathing is shallow and panicked but she cracks open one eye. “Is it…?”

“Yep,” The Doctor nods. “We’re good in here.” she gestures all around them at the blue light.

Malorie laughs, incredulous, seeing the others looking around, watching her people who have been inside for so long. Carlos waves a hand through the air, looking as if he expects to meet resistance. 

“Guys?” Jack is making a face, deep in concentration. “I literally don’t think I can open my eyes. They won’t open.” Eliza laughs and goes over to him, joltingly, unused to walking while seeing. She trips and crashes into Ruby, Jack’s sister, who falls into her brother, and _then_ he opens his eyes.

The Doctor gives them a minute to adjust, blinking in the day and falling like baby giraffes learning how to walk (this is Mick’s analogy, which he announces in amusement).

“Okay!” The Doctor motions towards the Waverider and the TARDIS. “We’re going to introduce these two. You five start putting it together. We need a name for it,” she wrinkles her nose. “We can’t just keep calling it ‘it’. How about…”

“Firebomb.” Ryan suggests, at the same time as Peggy says, “Something to do with birds.” 

“Code names! Love it! Let’s call it Phoenix.”

“The rest of you, we’re on guard duty. We’ll take up positions around them,” Sara projects her voice so everyone can hear. “Malorie and I start here, Mick, you and Jack over there. We rotate positions and partners every fifteen minutes for new eyes. Yell if you see anything suspicious.”

Nora has tentatively let her arms down, fairly confident the shield will stay. She can feel it ebbing in the electric currents, tugging at her like a wave on the shore. She turns and signals to Graham, who, along with Yaz and Ryan, will take turns watching out the window with the remaining neuroblocker. He gives a thumbs up back and turns around to inform everyone in the other room that they are okay. Nora can’t hear the cheers from the people inside, but she can feel them, shaking the ground like their own miniscule earthquakes, remaking the shape of the world.

* * * * 

“Hello, beautiful,” The Doctor kneels on the floor, prying a hexagonal panel from the foot of a cluster of small crystals. She wrenches it off with an “oof!” and the golden glow that infuses the interior is met with a deeper light. If you asked Zari what color of the light was, she couldn’t tell you. It was like the color of a galaxy. It was the color of a constellation. It was the color of stars being born, and at the same time, far away, a tree growing in the earth as well. Zari saw that tree sprout from a seedling, grow, stretch towards the sky, turn years and years over before showering down into dust that was golden like light. That was the color of this. 

“Usually not supposed to do this,” the Doctor grins. “But I’ve done it before. It went…” she sits back on her heels. “Well, nothing blew up, so.”

“I’m so reassured.” Sara mumbles. She is here too because no one touches the Waverider without her there, especially not for something like this. They’ve dragged several cables from Gideon’s mainframe to a plug in the TARDIS (Zari doesn’t know how the Doctor can tell what is plug in this amalgamation of structures, but it sparked and whizzed when she connected them, and Gideon said she could feel it working). “They’re from different worlds and different times,” the Doctor had said. “But they’re made for the same thing.”

“This is kind of like the _soul_ of the TARDIS,” the Doctor explains, indicating the light. “I just have to adjust her frequency so we can hear her.” She points the sonic into the micro-galaxy, and a reverberation fills the room. More sparks issue from various outlets and everyone leaps (or, in the case of the Doctor, falls) back from the swirling depths of the TARDIS. 

“Well, Doctor, this is new!” Everyone jumps ten feet in the air and looks for the source of the sound. Projected next to the console are two figures.

“Hello, Legends. Doctor.” Gideon’s normally impassive features show a hint of excitement.

“Oh, _you’re_ the Legends!” The other woman glows like the crystal interior of the TARDIS. Her eyes are dark but within them is another sun. 

“Hello, you!” The Doctor breathes in amazement. She pulls herself up on the edge of the console to face the TARDIS. “Look at _you_! New look. I love it.”

The TARDIS smiles shyly and spins. “Me. It’s been a long time since we’ve talked like this. What did you do this time?” 

“Hey!” the Doctor protests. “That was _you_ , the last time!”

The TARDIS smiles cheekily. “Maybe. Anyway, Gideon and I figured it out already. We’re going to make a frequency enhancer that isn’t limited to time or space.”

“You can do that?” The Doctor tilts her head. 

“Psh. Course we can.” The TARDIS takes Gideon’s hand and swings it (how they do this, the physical beings do not know, since the two in question are both holograms).  “We can do anything.”

Sara and Zari are openmouthed in amazement. “I bet the Time Masters didn’t know you could do _this_!” Zari says. “Okay, I had no idea either, but still.”

 “You’d be surprised what happens to any conscious being, given enough time,” Gideon smiles.

“And love,” the TARDIS interrupts. “Love too. That’s important.” She cocks her head, listening. “You are making a love song.” Outside, whirring and clanging and buzzing on their contraption continues, thanks to the devices on Ray’s suit, since most power tools here have long since vanished.

“If we plug ourselves directly into it, it will most likely explode,” Gideon explains. “But if we give you just a little of us, then you should be fine.”

“’Should be?’” Zari puts this in air quotes.

“I’ve never actually made one of these before, Miss Tomaz.” Gideon says dryly.

“Me neither!” The Doctor flips her sonic and catches it. “Shall we?”

* * * *  

They emerge from the TARDIS a little while later (the blue box part) with a small device surrounded by a ball of light, not quite a life force but close enough. 

“What,” Ray stands up, raising his visor. “is that?” And then: “What?” he replies defensively to Sara’s raised eyebrow indicating his visor. “Safety is important!”

“You have an atom suit!” she hisses and throws up her hands in defeat. 

“It’s a…ah… a space-time amp!” the Doctor nearly shouts, cradling the thing softly in both hands. The late afternoon sun streams around it, making it look even more ethereal.

“But what is it?” Malorie cranes her head to look at it while keeping a safe distance. 

“It’ll make a big enough wave—of sound, energy, whatever—to cover the whole earth,” Zari makes a circular motion with her hands. “They—Gideon and the TARDIS—they made it.” She still doesn’t know how. She remembers the Doctor fusing together tiny wires, having Zari place an infinitesimally small conductor in it, Sara holding the connecting cables (“Sara, physical strength doesn’t stop you from getting electrocuted!” “Shhh Zari now is not the time to be a mom!”), sparks flowing from the Waverider to the TARDIS and back and around, and a firestorm (“Haha, get it?”) of flashes, but gently, hanging in the air, directed by Gideon and the TARDIS, who took time and space and made it so they could travel and see wonders and help people, compress this expansion of life into this small construction of wire and metal not found on this earth (“And,” the Doctor said, grinning, “an echo of the very first sound ever made in the universe.” “How do you put that in a box?” Zari whispered to Sara, who shrugged and said, “Just go with it.”).

 “It’s beautiful,” Peggy stands up in awe, wiping some unidentified cobalt-and-rust substance off her hands. The orb seems to rotate, making not so much of a sound as the suggestion of one.

Nora reaches out towards it and… giggles? “It feels like… like bubbles!” She laughs again, blue sparks showering from her hand to the ground.

The Legends look a little frightened (except for Ray, who just looks like he saw a unicorn (the nice kind) making friends with a puppy). “It’s _really_ strong.” The Doctor says by way of explanation.

“We should probably put it in the Phoenix.” Zari says, with a resounding chorus of “’Yep, good idea’, ‘uh huh, okay’, and ‘good plan’s.


	11. Like Footprints in the Grass

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Sara leans over a hastily drawn map, compiled from several other maps—topographical, geographic, tourist hiking trails, normal road maps, etc. that were lying around— where their end game is laid out (Sara has written “END GAME” across the top in big letters so no one gets confused about which plan they’re going off of).

“Me, Mick, Ryan, Malorie, Yaz, Maggie, Jack, Xi, Ruby, and Deva,” (she indicates the other volunteers) “will split into two groups. We’re gonna scout out the way to the power plant, and make sure there’s no crazies out there.”

“Nope, just in here!” Charlie quips.

Sara gives her a look, the one she usually gives Charlie right about now, and continues. “The Doctor, Zari, Charlie, Nora, Ray, Eliza, Carlos, Graham, and Peggy will follow as soon as we give the all clear, take the Phoenix to the power plant, and… do whatever with it. We’ll meet you there soon as the coast is clear. Everyone else stays here, getting ready as many communication devices as you can find and, you know, in case anything blows up when we let loose a huge psychic blast and turn all the power back on at once for the first time in seven years. We rest tonight, and leave tomorrow at three a.m. Hopefully, no one else will be crazy enough to be awake then. Clear?”

“Aye, Captain”s resound around the table. They have gathered every weapon they could find, along with every radio, dead cell phone, walkie talkie, anything they could use to patch up the fragments of the world. What they are attempting is possibly the riskiest thing imaginable. Someone has grabbed a roll of duct tape, which hangs on Aly’s arm like a bracelet.

“They’ll know we’re there,” Rick says, meaning the puppets of the thing. “We gotta be careful.”

And yet no one looks scared. They look—determined. Ready. Unflinching. A look Ruby (one of the younger ones; a teenager when this started) would describe as “110% done.”  Most of the group hasn’t gone outside in seven years. And yet they all volunteered to go out—with no blindfolds—on the trust of these people they have just met, because in the past few hours they have seen more miracles—and _seen_ more—than they have in longer than they can remember.

Sara nods. “We leave at three fifteen precisely.” Ray, Zari, Mick, and Charlie look at her imploringly. She sighs deeply. “Fine.” She clears her throat to better project over the small crowd. “Okay gang, put on your superhero pants, we’re gonna save the world!” 

“So _she_ can say ‘gang’?” The Doctor leans over and whispers to Yaz, who giggles, amid all the cheering.

 

* * * * 

The garden is positively electric with energy. The birds can feel it too; they zip around without making a sound. Ryan is discussing memes with a group of kids; Graham sits near Grace, who is making a paper crane, and her mother; Sara talks strategy with Jack; Charlie is standing with Violet and Xi. Malorie kneels by her kids, who look at her with serious eyes, like they’ve lived a hundred years.

“I _will_ come back, okay?” Her eyes are burning with an intensity strong enough to start a fire. “I know this goes against everything I’ve ever told you to do. But this could mean that—you don’t need to wear blindfolds. Ever. I can show you what the sky looks like. You can—climb trees.” Her voice breaks. “Okay? I couldn’t give you birthdays. But I can give you this.” She puts a hand up to each other their faces and they look at her with knowledge that seven-year-olds should never have.

“It’s okay, Mama,” Olympia says. She reaches out and touches her mother’s cheek.

“We won’t be alone.” Tom looks solemnly at her, and after seven years without a day apart, they let her go. 

Yaz, watching, blinks away the tears that have formed, and the Doctor comes up beside her with her hands in her pockets. She doesn’t say anything, just stands close enough that their shoulders brush together, and they watch the finality of an ending at the same time as all the possibilities of a beginning unfold, like the wings of a bird about to take flight.

 

* * * *

Stepping outside feels like stepping onto another planet. The scouts have the eleven neuroblockers (one for each scout plus one extra in case something goes wrong), while the others are umbrellaed under a canopy of blue. Nora swoops her hands out like an orchestra conductor, and the shield splits apart, entering their eyes and turning their pupils electric blue.

“That… is creepy.” Ryan inspects Graham’s eyes.

“Weird.” Yaz agrees, standing on tiptoes and peering at the Doctor, who gives her an amused look. 

“Remember, tell me if you start to get tired,” the Doctor instructs Nora. “You can at least let go of me, and I can probably amplify it to take the strain off of you.”

“Don’t worry,” Nora gives her a ferocious smile. “I don’t think I’ll be tired.”  

“It’s really just fixing something in your mind,” Ray explains. “So it won’t take as much energy because it’s just putting something back where it’s supposed to be. Nora explained it to me.”

“So _that’s_ what you were doing last night.” Zari looks very smug. She’s forgiven Nora, but she still likes to make her life difficult every once in a while. Charlie snickers at this, and Nora rolls her eyes, and Ray becomes the only spot of bright red in the immediate area aside from his suit, and Sara raises a warning eyebrow at Zari, and Mick just gives one short “Ha!”.

“Okay,” Malorie redirects them and takes a shaky breath, still trying to get used to being outside twice in less than twelve hours. “God, this is gonna be so much easier being able to actually _see the fucking map_.” 

“That’s the spirit!” Deva cheers, raising her fists in the air. “We totally got this.” 

Jack has barely moved and Ruby pats his hand comfortingly. “You used to chop down entire trees. You can do this.” 

Xi spreads their arms wide. “If this works, I am never going back inside ever.”

“What about for blizzards?” Ray asks.

“What about for hurricanes?” Peggy adds.

“What if it’s just _really_ humid out and there’s a lot of mosquitoes?” Charlie wants to know.

“ _Alright_!” Sara looks exasperated. “Jeez, this is like wrangling a bunch of toddlers. More so than _usual_.” She ignores the Legends’ offended protests.

“Are they always like?” Malorie checks her sidearm and knife at her belt.

Sara grins. “Yep. What can I say? We make the apocalypse fun.” She elbows Malorie, who is trying her hardest to not smile. 

The pre-dawn is misty and dark gray, the air alive with new-ness and dew on every blade of grass. Their footsteps leave imprints in the ground. “I forgot what feet looked like.” Eliza bends down and leaves her handprints in the grass as well.

“The TARDIS and the Waverider are all set,” The Doctor had checked on the ships to adjust some settings or another that only Ray and Peggy partially understood. “Set to contain any extra energy or redirect it around the compound. In case anything, uh, explodes.”

“That’s it then,” Sara takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent of damp earth and trees. “We’re ready to go. Scout Team One--”

Maggie raises her hand. “I thought we decided on a team name!” 

“See!” the Doctor elbows Ryan, who just grunts.

“Okay.” Sara takes a patient deep breath. “What are your names?”

“We’re Hawkeye.” Maggie points at her group, consisting of Jack, Deva, Mick, Malorie, and Ruby. “The underrated Avenger. He’s kind of like us—tired, needs coffee, wants to take a nap, somehow makes it through. You guys are Rainbow Falcon. We went with an Avengers theme.” Ryan, Yaz, and Xi grin proudly at the name.

Sara barely blinks before countering, “Is this because I’m bi?” She ushers both teams into position, and Malorie quadruple checks the maps and compasses.

“No!” Xi protests. “It’s because _I’m_ bi!”

Ruby gasps. “Guys. If this works... we can see actual rainbows again.” She waves at Team Hawkeye as they split around the Phoenix group, flanking them into the trees.

 

Sara gives one last wave at her Legends, silently willing them to be safe. She would give them her heart to take with them, if she could. She wishes she could give them a shield, like Nora. If she squints, she can see the faint blue glow surrounding them. It tints everything with a quiet light, and she can imagine what, hopefully, the sky will soon look like.


	12. Not Scared of Falling

They crouch in the bushes, the Phoenix glowing steadily, waiting for—

A piercing whistle sounds, to their left. Then one from the right, both the same tune. “Okay, that’s our cue,” The Doctor stands, not bothering to brush dirt off her knees. “We head right for the power plant. Everyone keeps an eye on everyone else. We go fast and we go quiet. Ray, you’re sure you’re okay holding that?”

He nods, his hands safely protected from the heat of the Phoenix with his suit. Nora stands close at his elbow as if to protect it, casting anxious glances at the strange object.

“Anyone else feel like we’re dropping our kid off at school?” Carlos asks wryly. There are murmurs of assent from the circle.

“I mean, we did _make_ this thing,” Eliza gestures at it. “It is our baby, in a way.”

The Doctor sonics the air around them. “Puppets didn’t find us yet. Power plant straight” – she points, a completely arbitrary direction in all the fog – “that way.”

* * * * 

The power plant rises in the fading darkness, in the mist seemingly out of nowhere. It is a small, unassuming-looking building, with a radio tower on one end and a spiraling antenna. 

“This is it,” Eliza breathes, bouncing a little on her heels.

“It’ll work,” Graham reassures a nervous-looking Nora. Ray bumps her gently with his shoulder, arms still full of a box of light and hopeful patchwork. She smirks at him and nudges him back.

Up ahead, Charlie bounds towards a door-looking shape. It is rusted, covered in ivy. She pulls as hard as she can, and with a grunt, it shifts and squeals on corroded hinges. Zari goes to help her, and they both go flying backwards in a tangle of arms and legs as the door basically falls open.

“It’s very dark,” Eliza peers into the dim doorway and wrinkles her nose.

Peggy pulls several flashlights out of her various pockets. “Magic!” she winks at Nora, who just sighs. 

Inside is not much better than out. Most of the place has been gutted, any useful objects taken a long time ago. There are a few animal nests, but not as many as they’d expected. 

“Where now?” Ray shifts the thing in his grasp. “This isn’t heavy, but it’s…. buzzy.” (“Buzzy?” Nora mouths at him, and he gives her a look). “It… it wants to go.” he tries to explain, but doesn’t have the words for something that exists without a spoken language.

There is a clatter and they all jump eighteen feet in the air. “Sorry,” Carlos looks sheepish. “Didn’t see it.” He nudges the scrap metal in the floor. “But, I did find the stairs!”

The Doctor races over and peers upwards. “Fantastic! Be careful though, they’re a little rusty.” She tests the spiral wrought-iron staircase. Bounces once, twice. “Should be fine though.” 

“Should?” Eliza looks concerned. 

“With the Doctor, ‘should’ is as good as you’re gonna get.” Graham says. 

“We didn’t drag ourselves out of bed at god-knows-how-early in the morning to be scared of falling!” Charlie announces, following the Doctor. 

“ _You_ didn’t,” Zari says, behind her. “ _I_ had to drag you out of bed.”

Charlie smiles cheekily. “You could’ve just come in with me. Then neither of us would’ve had to get up.” Zari scoffs and looks away, and Ray frantically elbows Nora, who shoots him a “yes, I see, stop hitting me” look.

They reach the top level with no accidents, although there is a concerning amount of rust. “Okay…” Zari consults a layout plan they’d found downstairs, somehow still intact. “Power to our right, radio to the left. Half of us connect the Phoenix, the rest get the coms ready. This is gonna be louder than that Metallica concert we went to in 1978.” she adds, mostly to herself. 

“But you weren’t alive then…” Peggy mutters, and then just shakes her head and releases what was left of her old conception of time. Who is she to say what is and isn’t possible? That _was_ her job, after all, to invent things that people didn’t think possible.

They split, the Doctor, Ray, Peggy, and Eliza taking the Phoenix and Charlie, Graham, Zari, Carlos, and Nora heading for the radio communications room.

“Okay,” Zari clasps her hands together, looking around. “Let’s get this up and running.”

“Uh.” Carlos casts a dubious look around the old studio, covered in dust with wires and cables everywhere. “How we gonna do that?”

Nora takes an enormous breath in and blows out. The dust rolls back like a wave, out the broken windows.

“That was… so cool, and also so disgusting!” Charlie exclaims.

“Can you fix these too?” Carlos holds the ends of two split wires, and Nora glares at him. 

“Do I have to do everything?”

“Okay, okay,” Graham hold up his hands. “He was just trying to lighten the mood.” Nora doesn’t apologize, but she stops giving Carlos a death glare, which he takes as good enough. “Let’s try this.” He stoops down and scoops up a roll of electrical tape. “I can do a bit of electrical work, and from what I’ve heard, Zari here can fix pretty much anything.”

“Aw, pshaw,” Zari waves a hand in feigned embarrassment. “Not everything.” 

“Yeah, she still can’t fix our coffee machine.” Charlie points out. They all jump as Carlos rips part of the drywall off. 

“What?” he says. “There’s gotta be extra wires and stuff in here.” He drags on a length of rubber tubing, which causes part of the ceiling to crumble. “Heh heh.”

“So funny,” Nora brushes plaster out of her hair. She flicks her fingers and he gets a handful of plaster in his face, but he just grins and receives an amused smirk in return. 

Zari has disappeared under the main console, where she is throwing unnecessary pieces out. Something whizzes past Charlie’s head. 

“Sorry.” (Zari doesn’t sound very sorry). She sits up. “Okay, we need to repair most of these connections, take out anything extra, like lights and stuff. All the power needs to be concentrated to broadcast. We can outfit it with some extra parts from the Waverider.” 

“You get the low stuff, I’ll get the high stuff?” Graham motions towards the black boxes of dials and tiny switches and monitors up on shelves and countertops. 

“Yeah.” Zari nods at him. “Charlie, you help him. Carlos, you’re with me. Nora, you make sure we don’t blow up.”

“Aye aye.” Carlos salutes.

 “Good. Now drag that big line over here. No—yeah that one. Under all that other shit. What even happened here? This place is a wreck. Did someone hate the 80’s station that much?” 

Charlie says “No!” forcefully as Nora loudly asserts “Yes.” Zari just sneezes in response. Carlos begins to whistle “A Spoonful of Sugar”, much to Graham’s amusement.

 

* * * * 

There is no Sara right now, only White Canary. She leaps like gravity does not hold her, lands just as gracefully, like she is dancing instead of fighting.

They’d expected the puppets to come, almost like a siren call drawn to their newly-freed minds. So, they figured they may as well create a distraction and draw as many of them as they could away from the Phoenix. This distraction consisted of meeting back up with the Hawkeye group, and Mick crashing through the forest, blowing flames into the air and yelling, “Come and get me, you sick bastards!”

The puppets were somehow quiet, like they were muted along with everything else. Nineteen of them, jacked-up-on-psychosis-and-who-knows-what. Sara had sent the Doctor’s friends and most of the school group into the trees. “Like in the Hobbit!” Deva had cheered. Now, relatively large stones, thrown and slingshotted, sharpened sticks, and a few bullets rained down.

Not that Sara and Mick _really_ need the help. When they are done, bodies litter the ground. Most unconscious. Some not. Sara doesn’t like the feel of this place. The forest feels like a dead one, even though there are clear signs of some sort of faded, watered-down spring.

“…Wow.” Deva half-slides, half falls from the lowest branch of the tree. “That was…”  


“Hot.” Ruby winks, dropping to the ground. The rest of the scouts tumble out of the trees behind her like disgruntled, disheveled wood sprites. 

“Uh. Okay. Not what I was gonna say, but like, you do you.”

Sara dramatically flips her hair. “She’s right. I’ve seduced many a lady with these moves.”

“She has.” Mick nods affirmingly. “Remember the queen of France?”

The group’s mouths drop open in amazement and in multiple questions, but Malorie holds up a hand. They all look at her expectantly. “…Okay, I want to know as much as you do,” she admits. “But later. We should get moving.”

“That’s a good incentive to stay alive.” Xi muses. 

“Glad I can be of multiple uses.” Sara deadpans, offering a short bow.

“Okay. Which way?” Ryan turns in circles. “What?” he says at Yaz’s look. “I don’t like the outdoors! You know this!” She just claps him on the shoulder reassuringly.

“Wait!” Jack stands poised, listening. “Hear that? That’s electricity. I know that sound. I was surrounded by it for years. In an environment just like this. Sounds sound different in the woods. Gets lost in the trees. But it’s that way.” 

Ruby comes up behind him and rests her chin on his shoulder. “I hear it too.”

“Good,” Mick says, shaking the old map. “Because I don’t know how to read this.”

“Yeah!” Ryan elbows Yaz. “Google Maps for the win.”

“Onward!” Sara waves an arm, already marching forward. “I’m betting there are more on their way.”

“That’s usually how this goes in video games,” Deva nods astutely. “The closer you get to your goal, the more enemies come at you. All at once. _Aaaaalll_ at once.” 

“Work on your pep talks?” Xi smacks her gently on the head, sidestepping an unconscious puppet.

Maggie grimaces as she walks past. “This is so creepy.”

“Shhh, it’s fine, they’re sleeping.” Ruby waves a hand. “Don’t wake them.” She covers her mouth as she bursts into semi-hysterical giggles. 

“Shh--” Sara turns around, walking backwards. “Don’t make me come back there.”

Ruby, Deva, and Maggie are doing their best to contain themselves. Sara decides to let them get it out (she knows from dealing with the Legends that sometimes it’s better to just let them have their fun). The muffled forest and the lifting fog absorb the sound of their laughter, but it seems to grow and brighten as it does.


	13. To the Stars, From the Ground

Charlie drags the last reflector into place while Zari attaches the final cable, and then they all collapse on the ground for a well-deserved rest.

“I think we win… the record for… fastest international radio communications array… ever built.” Carlos wheezes, looking like a starfish on the floor. “Also I think I’m dying from the dust.” 

“What—why—never mind.” Nora wrinkles her nose at Carlos, who starts making dust angels, at which Zari starts laughing hysterically, at whom Charlie tries and fails to not look charmed.

“I wonder how the Doc is doing?” Graham is reminded because making dust angels is absolutely something she would do.

“Why don’t you come see for yourself?” The subject of their conversation strides triumphantly into the room, looks down, and beams. “Dust angels! We’re creative here.”

“You can say that again.” Zari hauls herself to her feet using the side of a desk. “We… expanded.” 

The Doctor refocuses and gives the completely changed room an admiring examination. “Looks amazing. I couldn’t’ve done it better myself.” 

They’d gotten the idea from the long-desisted astronomy projects. “I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE THE STARS AGAIN!!!” Carlos had suddenly shouted, remembering that space existed, and then looked apologetically sheepish. “Sorry. I have ADD and let me tell you it has been _hell_ trying to stay contained inside for seven years.”

“Yes, because _that_ was the bad part.” Nora muttered.

“You should travel with the Doc sometime,” Graham suggested, handing the pliers to Zari. “They look even more incredible up close.”

“I had a friend who used to be an astronomer,” Carlos’s gaze unfocused as he remembered. “I hope she’s okay. But that reminds me—” he cracked a grin— “she worked for a little at this station called the ‘Very Large Array’. Best name ever. Astronomers suck at naming things.”

“THAT’S IT!!!” Zari had shouted, flinging a rusted panel covering across the room in excitement. “That’s how we can boost the signal!”

That is why almost every spare surface is now covered in radio dishes of all sizes, made out of anything they could find—random scrap metal, bowls, old fan covers, a trash can, the two actual satellite dishes.

“Hello, you.” The Doctor squats down next to the smallest dish, made of a tiny old can they had found. “You look spectacular. You’re going to save the world.” Graham just waves a hand at the other four and made a “this-is-what-she-does-just-go-with-it” face.

“Wanna see the power room?” The Doctor is already out the door. They follow, speed-walking to keep up with her, until they reach the doorway where she abruptly yells “Stop!” and flings out a hand, after which they all crash into each other. “Sorry. Not quite up to fire code.” The Doctor smiles apologetically. 

“Hey!” Eliza waves with one hand. She is wearing huge work gloves and holding an extremely live wire in her other hand. “Don’t trip!” The floor is covered in wires and cables, running through the whole room, from outlet to extension cord to power strip, generator to switchboard to circuit breaker to who-knows-where.

“Nobody even sneeze.” Peggy advises dryly. “We just might blow up.” 

Ray set the Phoenix down as gently as physically possible on top of the main power console, in the center of the room. Everything is plugged in from there, or duct taped, or clamped. It looks a little like the inside of the TARDIS, everything spiraling outward from the center.

Peggy holds up a handful of extension cords, all bright shades of blue, fuchsia, turquoise, and yellow. “Ready to try this?”

“We painted them so we wouldn’t get confused with all the others.” Eliza explains. 

“But where did you get the paint?...” Zari shakes her head. “Never mind.”

“You sure this isn’t going to catch fire?” Charlie asks skeptically.

The four newly-inaugurated engineers glance at each other, and then chorus, “Nnnope!” 

“Let’s get to it then!”

“Why are you so excited about fire?”

“Some of us like to live on the edge, Z.”

“Shhh!-“ the Doctor holds up a hand. “I heard something.” 

There is another crash downstairs. They have all reflexively gone into silent mode, gravitating towards each other and the Phoenix. Zari motions that her, Charlie, and Ray will go downstairs, silently conveying that since they are arguably most equipped for fighting, they’ll go check it out. Charlie rolls her eyes and mouths, “Why do we always have to go first?” Ray interjects as well, waving his hands, and then Peggy quietly and overdramatically stomps her foot so they all pay attention, and indicates that actually, they all will go down as a group, since their odds of survival are better together anyway. They double-file out the door, leaving pairs guarding the door and along the hallway. The Doctor, Charlie, Carlos, and Peggy creep towards the absolute wreck of a staircase to peer over the edge. 

“Guys?” Sara whisper-yells from down below, staff in one hand, looking around. “Are you here?” 

The Doctor starts to laugh, because the crash they’d heard was Jack tripping over the same debris Carlos had earlier. Ruby is laughing at him instead of helping. Yaz and Ryan wave. 

“Yes!” Carlos grins. “It worked. I put it there as an alarm.” 

“Very funny.” Jack growls, trying to shake his foot free.

“ _I_ thought it was hilarious.” Charlie drawls, leaning over the railing. “What took you guys so long?”

“There were like, thirty of them!?” Ruby exclaims. “Sara and Mick basically took them out double-handedly?!”

“It was crazy!” Maggie echoes Ruby’s awestruck tone, and Sara looks proud at the compliments. 

“We’re all gonna be dead if we don’t get inside?!” Malorie mimics them as she shoves the rest of the group further into the abandoned building and closes the door. “You are all worse than my kids ever were.”

“We’re not as cute, either.” Ryan quips. She gives him an exasperated look. “Ooh, that was good, just like my gran used to give me when I was bein’ annoying.”

“C’mon up!” the Doctor waves an arm. “Come see what we’ve been working on.”

* * * *

The messes of wires have been appropriately ooh-ed and ahh-ed over, and they are just starting to prep the connections when Nora makes a quiet noise and falls over.

“I’m fine, I’m FINE!” she holds up her hands as Ray, Eliza, and Maggie rush to her rescue. “We don’t have a lot of time. They—it— _whatever_ knows we’re here. Still hasn’t gotten past me, though.” She looks smug despite her trip to the floor. 

“Alright, let’s get this up and running!” The Doctor claps her hands. “Record time! Let’s do this!”

“We’re going to have the only record for this, so it doesn’t really matter!” Carlos cheers as he races out of the room with Yaz. “Gonna go ask Team Storm” (like the X-Men; they had new team names now) “if they’re readyyyy…” his voice trails off the farther he gets down the hallway to the radio room.

Yaz returns less than a minute later, slightly out of breath, one bright yellow cable in her hand. “This one goes into the Phoenix. Peggy says: 'Ready to go, Team Arroway!' Eliza added that last part.” (from _Contact_ —“get it? Cause of the radio dishes and the aliens!”) 

“Here we go,” The Doctor shakes her head. “Stand back, everyone else.” She takes a deep breath and plugs into the first port of the main radio control to which all the dishes are connected. 

“Uh, Doctor?” Yaz adds. “They haven’t turned the power on yet.”

“Oh. Right.”

Within the next few minutes, all five wires are connected, running down the hallway like so many colorful snakes. They are gathered in the electric room, clustered around the main console. The Doctor has one hand on the lever (because “Yes, there has to be a lever, we’re doing as many stupid jokes as possible in case we die, we’re going out humorously.” “ _Okay_ , Eliza.”)

“Okay.” The Doctor looks around the circle. “We ready?” She waits until they all nod. “Now you _might_ want to get back. Here goes!” She pulls down the lever. Everyone jumps back at the fireworks of sparks, and the Phoenix starts to hum and glow again, as does every single wire in the room. The group exchanges nervous glances and collectively takes another step back. The machine revs a few turns, sputters, sounding a little like the TARDIS, and then with a _whoosh_ reminiscent of the Waverider’s engines, steadily takes off. Ray thinks the cheering might finally take down this dilapidated building, but he doesn’t care (even with all the rust and sharp edges that could fall on them).

It feels like a fire, but without the danger of burning. Maggie reaches out like she’s in a dream, says, “I didn’t realize I forgot what it sounded like.” The electric hum seems to reverberate all around, into the air, into the ground. The Phoenix, born of things that defied logic of time and space, would jumpstart every radio or transmitting device that was still technically functional. Using these as conductors or speakers more than your typical radios, it would turn up the volume as loud as possible, so everyone could hear, regardless of where they were. “Like… ley lines!” Aly had said. “Except for sound.” They just hoped there were enough people around to hear it.

Xi points. “Looooook!” The hair on their arm is standing on end. Zari’s hair is starting to rise around her face, and Charlie points and laughs at her. Sara, for no other reason besides she can and Ava’s not here, reaches out with her staff and gets a little zapped. “Heh.”

“Alright!” The Doctor claps her hands together once, takes out her sonic and scans the Phoenix. “That’s stable. Who’s on radio?” Eliza, Peggy, Carlos, Zari, Yaz, Ryan, Graham, Deva, and Maggie raise their hands. “Okay, go. It’s time to send a message.” They nod, and Zari heads out of the room to get a head start. “The rest of us--Charlie, Xi, Ray…What?” 

Nora is looking concerned. The Doctor would say she looks scared, but she is fairly certain Nora is afraid of nothing, considering what she’s been through. “More.” She means puppets. Her eyes are wide. “Surrounded.”

“That’s our cue!” Sara sticks her fingers in her mouth and lets out a piercing whistle, almost like a bird of prey. Then two more. “In case we’re ever far away,” she explains, already running out the door with Ray and Nora ahead of her. “Oh—” she pauses and swings back around the door. “We got this. You guys protect this thing. Make it loud.”

“Make it fast!” Nora yells from the hallway.

Sara stops short and looks around at the terrified faces of her new friends, the ones that have lived this hell for edging on a decade. What can she say to them? What words won’t be meaningless? Inspiration strikes. She takes the silly route (as usual). Taking a deep breath, she bellows, “New name! ‘The Avengers! As in—higher, further, faster! It’s the boss battle! No one dies today! We’re the strongest! Let’s go people!” She grins at Maggie’s shriek of elation and the cheers echoing throughout the building. Silence is finished. This is the end, when they throw everything they have into one final, desperate play. They are done hiding.

“Those are some of our favorite movies.” Mick tells Maggie.

“Mine too!" 

“When we’re done,” Malorie tells Maggie. “You better sit with my kids through all those. Even though you told them most of the plot already.”

“Nothing would make me happier,” Maggie says seriously, putting a hand on Malorie’s arm and looking her right in the eyes. “Nothing.”

 Malorie tries not to laugh. She is always surprised she still remembers how. “There’s so many…”

 “Don’t worry. You’ll have time.” Sara salutes her new friends, then ducks out of the room and, not bothering with the stairs, simply vaults over the railing to the first floor, Legends in tow.


	14. A Love Song Like Thunder

“Ready?” Peggy asks. “God, this feels like we’re back at NASA.” She runs her hand over the controls, ready for liftoff. 

“Yeahhhh, yeah, we get it, you worked for _NASA_.” Eliza says sassily. She does some jazz hands and cheekily returns Peggy’s _look_. 

Peggy just shakes her head and flips the first switch. “Radio One is a go.” 

“Oh, thank god we’re not naming all the dishes.” Malorie mutters over the walkie talkie. They’d found two, incredibly old, broken-antenna devices nearly buried in an old tool kit. With the Phoenix, they finally worked. 

“First time in seven years, and this is what we get.” Carlos had held the walkie talkies up like they were Simba and he was Rafiki.  

“Loud as you can,” The Doctor’s voice reminds them from the electrical room, where her, Malorie, Jack, Maggie, Ryan, Xi, and Ruby are guarding the Phoenix. 

Peggy flips the second switch, and _something_ gets louder. It feels like someone is trying to push two same-pole magnets together, except the magnets are all around them.

“Oohhoo, they didn’t like that!” Ruby cheers from over the walkies. “DIDN’T LIKE THAT, DID YA?” There are shouts of protest from Jack. “Sorry.” (she is not sorry). 

“Can I?” Eliza looks like a child on Christmas, and every other holiday combined. “Nowwwww?” 

“Jesus,” Peggy mutters, but the corner of her mouth turns up. She turns in the spinny chair (the last one with all four wheels) to face them all and says firmly: “Yes.” 

Eliza whoops and runs along the line, flipping all the radios to broadcast.

“Earth?” Peggy speaks into the microphone. “This is… well, this is what’s left. If anyone can hear us, we’re transmitting a hell of a lot of power. The… things, those things that have been making us see things? They need as little electrical interference as possible to hijack our brains. Something smart about brainwaves. That’s why the power was off and now we turned it back on. We built something to make everything bigger. Stronger.”

“Minds run on electricity,” Yaz continues. “These things--they target your brains. The other stuff was getting in the way, so they shut it off, because too much noise, other power sources, was a threat. But they didn’t count _you_. _You’re_ an electrical conductor. We need you, all of you, to _think_ as loud as you can. You can push them out. You have the power to get rid of them. They just made you _think_ you didn’t.” 

“So make some noise,” Peggy adds. “Be as loud as you can. Stop hiding. They got us because we were unprepared and didn’t know we could fight. But if we make a big enough counter-wave, using the energy sources we have—all of us, everything we’ve built—we can push them back.” 

“Be loud.” Graham jumps in. “Take all that noise, all that potential, all that power you’ve been hiding for seven years, and be as loud as you can. We can do this. They aren’t stronger. They’re not even smarter. They just made you scared. So be brave now. You were never defenseless.”

The walkie talkie crackles as the Doctor shouts, “Imagine, a huge wave of electrical impulses, stored up for seven years, all releasing at once!” They can’t see her, but they all _know_ the Doctor is waving her hands around. “You’re a lot bigger than you feel! Thoughts are powerful. A hundred thousand minds all at once? Fighting back? Imagine. This is _your_ home! This is _your_ mind. That’s your battleground. Take it back.” She pauses. “Okay. I’m gonna put this on a loop for a few minutes, so everyone can hear it. Be ready. You’ll know what to do.” Peggy releases the broadcast button, and they look around at each other and feel the weight of their words somehow lift them up.  

 

***

“What—the – fu--!!!” the rest of Nora’s words are lost in Charlie’s scream of rage as she takes four puppets at once.

“There’s—so—many!” Ray is breathing hard as he punches one out, not bothering to blast it. “It’s like they’re being called!”

“That’s cause they are!” Sara yells back, swinging her staff in an arc. “The thing is protecting itself.” 

Zari shudders. “It’s sentient. Is that worse? That’s worse.” She ducks and then jumps back up and kicks, taking one of about fifty out.

“Personally, I think these freaks’ eyes are the worst.” Mick offers his opinion. The Legends back towards each other, forming a circle. No one trips or stumbles. They are one force, one family, and protecting is what they do best. Fixing things that are broken. Sara is about to give an order for Mick to throw down some flame as a cover while the rest of them do some fancy footwork, when the very air seems to lift its head and listen.

The message broadcasts across every radio wave, every frequency of sound and light. The puppets stop, confused, stumbling around and trying to cover their ears. The Legends just cheer as the voices of their friends sound out across the world. 

“It’s still wrong to kill them right now, right?” Mick clarifies, gesturing towards the incapacitated enemy.

About fifty unconscious puppets later, Zari whistles the all clear signal for those inside and Sara directs them towards their posts on various points of the building. “This is it, guys,” she says, looking each of them in the eyes. “This is the most legendary thing we’ll ever do.”

“Saving the world with the power of your sappy-ass playlist!” Zari grins wickedly, trotting off in the direction of the north side of the building. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Sara waves her off. “Stations, people! We got a big party to DJ for.”

 

*** 

“And now,” Eliza puts on a dramatic radio announcer voice. “We have some specially curated tunes for your asskicking pleasure.” Before they left, Sara had Gideon transfer one of her playlists onto the world’s oldest iPod Nano. Everyone is always surprised at her eclectic taste in music—she’s makes the Legends playlists with music from every era, every genre, every situation they could possibly need. Their most regularly played is one simply called “Life.” Sara won’t tell them what inspired this playlist, but they’re _pretty_ sure it’s the one she made when she fell in love with Ava.

Carlos takes a deep breath and blinks back sudden tears. “I haven’t heard music like this in seven years. It’s like,” he touches his chest. “There was a hole in my heart. Like I didn’t have a heart.” 

“Yeah,” Ruby murmurs over the walkies. “We could never sing very loud, when we did.”

“Well,” Eliza says softly as her hand hovers over the play button. “This is gonna be the loudest.” She makes a high-pitched noise of anxiety and anticipation (her pterodactyl imitation, as Ruby calls it) as she hesitates and then slams her hand down on the console. 

There is a quarter-second of silence that feels like eternity as they wait to see if The Phoenix works.

Then—a faint hum--

 

\--then—the suggestion of a note--

 

\-- then—a rising sound—

 

\-- then—a noise—

 

\--then—a chord—

 

\--then – a symphony –

\-- then --

 

the world

                                                                       

                                                            wakes up.

 

 

Sound, life, moves in waves across the earth, following their patterns and roads of electrical impulses. It jumps across continents, fills the seas, whips the wind above the earth into a frenzy.

Malorie _swears_ she can feel it in her head, something sparking to life, like shocking yourself on something metal. But it doesn’t hurt. It feels like a door opening.

On top of one of the towers, Charlie slowly drops the puppet she is holding by the shirtfront and looks to the sky. Her face breaks out into the biggest grin, because she knows what it feels like to be imprisoned and then set free. She lets out a long, long yell of sheer exuberance. Next to her, Zari raises her hands to the sky, whooping back.

Inside, Carlos runs around like a kid who’s just been told he’s going to Disney, shouting a wordless song. Ryan cheers, pumping his fists in the air. Peggy’s lips are moving in a silent prayer, saying hello to the stars she might be able to see for the first time in seven years. 

On the ground, Nora yelps and stumbles, landing in a crouch in the dirt. The air around her crackles with ultraviolet light. “No!” she yells at Ray, who’s run up to help her. “I can’t control it right now! I don’t wanna—” she gasps for breath, not like someone who’s drowning, but like someone who has finally come up for air “—hurt you.”

The Doctor grabs one of the walkie talkies. “Time for phase two!” she yells.

“Right!” In the control room, Eliza dives for the radio and yelps as she spins wildly in the chair grabbing for the desk. Yaz jumps for her and they gently slam into the edge together. “Hear that?” Eliza shouts into the radio to whoever’s listening, slightly out of breath. “That’s what we can do! Now take that and fight back! Can you feel it in your mind? That’s _you_! That’s what you’ve been missing! That’s what they’re scared of! That’s your power! Use it!”

In the power room, The Doctor sonics the Phoenix. “All good on this end!”

“That’s great!” Xi calls sarcastically from across the room, trying to keep two sparking wires from blowing out.

“I’m gonna count the beat,” Carlos speak gently into the microphone, just like he used to for the kids he taught music to. “When I get to three, we all push, okay? Like giving birth.”

“No!” Malorie and Peggy shout in unison, as the only people present to have given birth.

“Okay, not that,” Carlos skootches away from them in the spinny chair in pretend-intimidation and chuckles, and his and Eliza’s laughter joins the song. “Anyway. You’ll know. And then we’re gonna fight together. Don’t try and think too hard. Just let it come to you. Your mind. Just feel it.” 

Sara taps her staff on the side of the tower, letting the sharp ring match the sound of Carlos’s voice. “One, two… one, two… one, two… one, two…” 

They all stand rapt, swaying almost imperceptibly with the music. It seems like the world is holding its breath, waiting for the bridge…

 _(Haha, Jaaack, get it, cause it’s the bridge of the song, and it’s gonna make us get from one place to another?)_

_(YES Ruby I got the pun.)_

_(I can’t wait to tweet all the terrible jokes I haven’t been able to share with the world for seven years.)_

_(Because the world was definitely missing all your genius.)_

_(They really were, weren’t they?)_

 

The wind feels as gentle as a feather, soft as a kiss. Sara raises her head and breathes deep, inhaling the scent of the sun.

“One, two, _three_.”

It feels like being struck by lightning, like having the wind knocked _into_ you, like finally understanding a physics problem that’s been bothering you for a week

 

Nora’s eyes fly open as the power of millions of people (there’s millions left!?) join together and she is the conductor

 

they are all standing on their feet they are all anchored to the ground they are in the trees they are in the sky the sky is singing

 

this is what thunderclouds feel like when they break open this must be what computer systems feel like when they link up this must be what birds feel like when they fly in formation this is what it feels like to write a song this is what it feels like when a seed opens up this is how it feels when a baby opens its eyes for the first time

 

there are

            millions

 

of minds

 

the pathways they have created carry their minds as well as the song in its current.

 

Nora closes her eyes and tilts her head back and breathes in deep like she is inhaling the first scent of spring, of the air after it rains. She lets the sparks flow down from her arms, dripping into the earth, reaching all of them. Time and space no longer matter. She can see the web, the network, the gossamer strands—there are millions of minds here.

 The Doctor looks over at the Phoenix, and it is glowing, it is glowing so loudly. She smiles and closes her eyes and lets the waves of light wash over her, hearing them chime and beam and ring deep. 

It would have crushed them, the pressure of it all, had they been alone. But together? They make a force as big as the sky. It is as if they’d connected all the constellations into one. 

“I think this is what the Force feels like,” Deva murmurs, and Eliza makes a noise of agreement.

Graham can see the light in every blade of grass and he _knows_ , even though he could feel it before, that Grace is always with him.                                                                       

Yaz laughs, gesturing around her. “This isn’t even just us. It’s… everything!”

The Doctor nods, and they can all feel it along the chain, rippling like a spiderweb in a breeze. “Every consciousness. Say hello to all of your neighbors.” 

“Hi…” Maggie and Deva whisper, half-dazed, in unison. They hear the birds and the foxes and the cats and the dolphins and things they didn’t even know existed answer back, each in their own language.

Nora hums along with it, _it_ being the bubble that surrounds them. It is everycolor and nocolor, if she had to put a name to it. It looks like… the old aerial maps of the earth from space, showing the lights on the surface of the planet. It looks like that, but instead of electricity, it is _them_. The life on it. It is stronger than anything she has ever seen, probably because it is the product of three different worlds. How can you break something with that kind of life behind it? 

They feel a push. A little resistance. A tiny blot of ink dropped on to paper. A tiny speck of white rot on the bark of their great tree.

“There it is,” the Doctor lets the words out between her teeth. “There you are.” 

Millions of eyes look to the sky. Most seeing clouds for the first time in years. Some seeing stars for the first time ever. Finally understanding how vast the universe is, how deep, how beautiful, how big. Finally out of hiding, finally knowing there is more beyond walls.

So they test this ceiling. It is not that big. By themselves, they never could have lifted it alone. But atlases are maps of the _whole_ world, not just one person holding it up by themselves; ants work together to move things; trees speak to each other so they can all find the sunlight; sentences are made up of words which are made up of letters which are made up of sounds; living things move because of trillions of cells and nerves and neural pathways working together; and everything is made of the same things and stars need to crash into each other to make new forms and new life.

The thing pushes back at them, tries to keep them down. But it doesn’t work because it picked them off one by one, making them afraid, making them think they are alone. Now, they are, as the saying goes, _stronger together_. They take all the rage at what they lost, all the fear, all the pain of losing those they loved; and all the strength they had to keep going, all the love that survived, all the memories of what they had that gave them hope to rebuild, and they

 

push

                        like a shield

 

            like an arrow

                                                like a flower opening up

 

                                                                                                (and it is a little bit like giving birth

 

            but it doesn’t really hurt

 

                                                and what they bring into the world isn’t so much a

 

            _being_ as a _possibility_                                         

 

and they _push_ and they reach and they stretch everything that they had been crunched up before for seven years, tendons popping and lungs expanding and hands reaching up up _up_

 

and they feel it give way like ice breaking on a pond (sharp it shatters into the cosmos, spinning shards that dissipate the farther they get), like falling through a glass door you didn’t realize was open this whole time (the shock of almost falling, of catching yourself), like opening a window that has been stuck shut for years (you push lean your shoulder into it, it hurts but you can feel it begin to move it jolts in the frame you push again and it squeals open and glides up lets the air in)

 

and then it is done it is ended or it has begun they do not know but it does not matter because all they all feel is the freedom the release their skin is free their eyes are free their minds are

 

big

 

so big

 

is this what living feels like

 

they had

                        forgotten

but

                                                                                                it is here

 

someone takes a deep breath and

 

they all feel it in their lungs and

 

slowly return to earth like the last sparks of a firework drifting to the ground

 

it hums as it pulls them back in

 

and their feet touch the ground

 

for the first time

 

in years.

 

Nora exhales a shaky breath and unclenches her fists, letting the light stream back into the earth. They all look around at each other, blinking spots out of their eyes. Ray breaks the silence with an enormous cheer that turns into a laugh. He swings Nora around and kisses her on the forehead, looks embarrassed but doesn’t care right now. Charlie whoops and jumps into the air. Inside, The Doctor blinks spots out of her eyes and pats the Phoenix on the top, whispering “Good job.” Everything is silent and blindingly loud at the same time. 

“Uh…” Eliza, in the control room, says in a near whisper into the microphone, to the world. “That’s our show folks. Welcome back.” She leans back in the chair that she fell into, looking around like she’s just been born.

“Hey!” Sara yells and waves wildly from the outside of the tower. “I think it worked!”

“Ya think?” Ryan shouts back, and suddenly they are all laughing and shouting and crying and everything is making noise, everything, and it echoes like a drum, it resounds like thunder.


	15. Aubade

They walk back in one giant, stumbling pile of legs and laughter. The sun looks brighter today. For many of them, this is the first sunrise they’ve seen in years. Their eyes hurt, but they do not care.

When they reach the clearing, Malorie drops to her knees as Olympia and Tom run at her, mouths moving in a silent yell because they haven’t quite yet figured how to use their vocal cords. Petra is behind them, waving wildly and joyfully.

People are pouring out of the house, cautiously, with abandon, afraid and alive. Everything is a commotion and it is glorious. Dean leads Rick by the arm, not because he needs it, but because, after an entire lifetime, he feels like he can see.

“The Phoenix will help you get communications back up,” The Doctor is explaining to Peggy, who is perhaps the most intellectually competent at the moment. Peggy is taking notes, something she hasn’t done in years, because there was nothing new to learn, because there was nothing new. Now there is _this_ , and they are terrified, but they are okay with that. There is a different kind of fear in not _knowing_ the future than not _having_ one.

Someone yells a ways behind them, and they all whip around, still unused to loud sounds and very used to threats. Rick gasps and stops, and this time Dean does have to hold him up.

“What…” Yaz asks, tears filling her eyes without knowing why as Rick falters and then somehow runs at full speed towards a man coming out of the woods. The two embrace in tears, and everyone cheers in joy because it feels like they’ve all been reunited with someone they lost.

“His brother!” Dean can barely speak for joy. “We though he died—he used to help with the school—he got lost—never came back—how—he’s here!”

The Doctor looks happier than her companions have ever seen her, and that’s saying something, because she is always very excited. Even Mick look weepy, though he will never admit it. Sara is high fiving all the kids, Ray is showing off his suit to Aly, Nora is making tiny fireworks like Gandalf and tossing them into the air where they whiz around like tiny dragons. Eliza is laughing. Carlos, who had run inside a minute ago, sprints back out with his guitar and starts playing random chords that sound like a lullaby, except instead of for falling asleep, it’s for waking up. “A… yballul.” Zari tries, sounding the word out backwards.

Charlie claps her on the back. “Nice try.” Zari makes a face at the shapeshifter, who just sticks her tongue out. Everyone is gathering, outside, outside.

Next to Malorie, Olympia has suddenly gone still and is staring hard at the woods, eyebrows drawn together as if she is trying to figure out a puzzle. She still clings onto her mother’s hand. Tom looks to where she points and his mouth drops open in recognition, just as Olympia figures it out and yells “Tom!!!”

“Wh—” Malorie looks down at the both of them. “Tom is right—” She follows their line of sight and freezes. “No. No no no no no no,” she shakes her head and stumbles back, her whole body starting to tremble. “You—you can’t be here—I heard the gunshot—you—” She closes her eyes and clenches her jaw and when she opens them, he is still there, coming through the birch trees.

There is a man stumbling out of the woods, shadowed, limping, tired, but very much alive. He opens his mouth but cannot speak, and his eyes fill with tears.

“We were a few miles across the river,” Jerry, Rick’s brother, speaks softly. It seems as if he is whispering inside their minds; there is no sound except their breathing. “I caught him one day, just before… I had to shoot him in the leg, but he stopped. I knocked him out and dragged him back to where I was holed up. I guess that worked, because he woke up just fine. Maybe it knocked the sense back into him… We… didn’t know where you were until we heard the broadcast.”

“Thank you,” Petra whispers next to him, for all of them.  

Everyone watches, holding their breaths like this moment is something precious that can easily shatter, and when Malorie and Tom slam into each other, holding each other as hard as they can, it is like a light has been turned back on.

If moments were timeless, this one would be a photograph, not frozen in time but living in it. Malorie and Tom on the ground where they kneel, younger Tom and Olympia around them. The trees are waking up. The wind is blowing old leaves and flower petals around all of them. The sun is golden, the light like a warm embrace. They are all looking, seeing, witnessing, eyes open, full. There are three worlds here, celebrating the return, the beginning, of a new one.


	16. Hope is the Thing With Feathers

It has, unsurprisingly, taken ages to say goodbye. But they have time.

The Doctor, her companions, and the Legends have spent the past few days helping set up communications lines, electricity, power grids. Watching the kids, who are so excited to find out what “outside” is that they forget that they could, you know, get carried away by the river rapids. Drawing up plans for new systems of transportation and green energy, because seven years with no power reminded them of what they destroyed before. Dreaming up schools and family reunions and what is on the other side of oceans. 

There are no more governments. There aren’t even any countries. But there are more people left in the world than they thought. There is more left to the world than they thought.

Surprisingly, what seems to be thriving the most right now is not only phone calls, but pictures. Cameras have been dug up from boxes in basements, covered in dust but still functional. The Doctor did… a thing, and now a very limited internet is back, the world is posting millions of photos-- selfies, other people, places, things they haven’t seen in years. 

Sara, returning from the Waverider, poses for a selfie with a group of kids outside the compound before bounding away. “Ava and Nate say we’re all clear. No more reality distortions or anything.”

Ray looks up from where he’s sitting on the ground soldering a laptop back together, ripped apart for any materials inside. “Do we have to go back now?”

“You know the rules. We can only interfere so much.”

“I wouldn’t call it interference so much as ‘saved our asses,’” Peggy swings out the door, holding a box labeled ‘Assorted components’ which she drops in front of Ray. “I still don’t know how to thank you.”

“You all did most of the work,” The Doctor says, dropping down next to Ray and shining the sonic’s light onto Ray’s work so he can better see. “We just helped you find the tools.”

“Ah ha!” Ray yells triumphantly as the screen comes to life with an unnecessarily loud noise. A group of curious kids and excited adults cluster around him, like moths to a flame. Olympia and Tom run over, reciting the names of all the world capitals they can remember as they have been doing for three days now. When Malorie had told them that the world was back, this was their response. Saying things out loud made them real. 

Eliza is busy making a sundial and charting stars, surrounded by a group of kids who’d only heard about such things as outer space.

“Kids? Enjoying school? The world really has changed.” Deva raises an eyebrow. She used to be an elementary school teacher and is busy planning outreach to the remaining communities in the area. 

Ruby sighs dramatically at her sarcasm. “ _I_ personally liked school. I was good at it too. See? I’m not _just_ a pretty face.” She raises her voice and winks at Eliza, who, for once, doesn’t have a sassy comeback. 

The Doctor just shakes her head and grins. Humans. What are you gonna do?

“The last radio’s all set,” Graham comes up behind her. “Garden’s expanded. Windows all opened. Birds freed. Boats repaired. Cars checked. Dangerous things…undangerousified. I think… I think that’s the last of it.”

Ryan wipes motor oil from his hands onto his jeans. “Somehow, I’m gonna miss this.” 

“Me too,” Charlie looks around at all the people. “Look at ‘em. And we got to be here for it.”

“I wish you could stay,” Aly sighs. “We’re really gonna miss you.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Sara puts a hand on their shoulder, tossing a small device up and down. “This is a multidimensional phone, of sorts. Don’t ask me to explain how it works. Our really smart friends made it up.”

“I resent that remark!” Ray calls from by the laptop, but he isn’t really upset, especially because Nora laughs at this. Sara really doesn’t want to put her back in her jail cell. But she has the feeling that Nora be with them again soon. Sara takes one slow look around and then whistles ear-piercingly loudly.

“What was that?” Ruby asks, covering her ears.

“I’m calling my kids,” Sara grins. In less than a minute, the Legends have all gathered.

Ruby nods incredulously. “Damn.” Sara just winks.

Yaz rests her head on the Doctor’s shoulder, and the four stand together, just breathing in the newfound peaceful mess of new life.

Sara looks around at all of her Legends, prouder than she has words to explain. “We did great, team. Time to go home.” she says softly. 

Zari reaches her arms out and makes grabby motions at Yaz, who laughs as she hugs her new friend.

“Keep in touch?” Zari asks as she hands Yaz a multiverse communicator. (They have yet to come up with a cool name for it, even though Ray has suggested a few very long, very scientific ones). 

“Always.”

“So—many--hugs!” Charlie fake-groans as she is attacked by the compound kids, who have been fascinated with her hair and piercings and general punk rock vibe since they arrived. But she hugs them all the same.

“Hey.” Malorie tentatively puts a hand on Sara’s arm. “I—Thank you. For this.” She pauses. “I didn’t know you could get this many second chances in life.”

Sara nods, her eyes full of hope. “I’ve had a few more than I thought I would too. It’s good to pass them on.”  She offers a hand to Malorie, who looks at her askance.

“Really? After all we’ve been through?” she pulls Sara into a hug, who laughs in surprise. Their embrace is strong, two women who went up against the world and didn’t shatter.

Tom grins. “I guess you got soft when I was away.” Malorie elbows him hard, and he fakes injury. “I deserved that one.” Malorie turns up her nose at him, but he just laughs, something he hasn’t done in years and is determined to make up for. How can he not? This morning, he saw Maggie teaching Tom and Olympia how to climb trees.

There are hugs, and tears, more than they can count. Goodbyes, and promises to keep in touch, and confused exclamations at a pathway to other worlds, and more tears, and laughter. Songs and cheers and salutes and thanks, so much love and grateful joy of being alive. Even though the radiant light—the network, the tangibility of their existence—is gone, they know they will always feel this, each other, in one glowing embrace.

“I feel like we’ve known each other for years!” Eliza says through sniffles. “I guess that’s what happens when you almost die together!” 

“Friends who die together stay together!” Ryan confirms, at which Yaz just rolls her eyes, her trademark enormous smile on her face.                  

Eventually, they part ways. The Doctor hands Sara something with a wink, tells her to “press that button if you ever need… some outside help.” The TARDIS is dwarfed next to the Waverider, but somehow, they seem like they’re standing next to each other, waving goodbye as well. The Legends stand on the ramp of the Waverider, waving enormously and excessively, because the Legends are always, as Nate says, “extra.” The Doctor and her companions whoop and jump around, echoing the kids who cheer and turn cartwheels, celebrating the wind on their faces. Grace stretches her hands up to the sky, reaching for a falling verdant leaf. The wind is gentle and full of life. 

The breeze picks up as the Waverider starts her engines, and the group on the ground looks up as she picks up speed, lifting off the ground and circling above them, doing a loop before shooting off into space. The resulting gust spins green leaves and flower petals, blows through their hair, carries the sounds of elation and love. Another sound begins in harmony, a sound like an old engine, the sound of movement and change and hope. It pulses and fades, and when it fades away, the blue telephone box is gone. In its place, it leaves stars, the color green, the sensation of the river washing over your feet, music, sounds, tiny flowers peeking through the earth, a future, hope, love.


End file.
